The English in the West Indies;

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THE WORKS OF
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

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THE ENGLISH

THE WEST INDIES

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THE ENGLISH

IN

The West Indies

OR, TEE BOW OF ULYSSES

BY

JAMES ANTHONY FKOUDE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY G. PEARSON, AFTER
DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR

NEW YOIUv -

CHARLES SCRLBNER'S SONS
1900

[All rights reserved]

— tz —

/

PREFACE.

My purpose in writing this book is so fully explained
in the book itself that a Preface is unnecessary. I
visited the West India Islands in order to increase my
acquaintance with the condition of the British Colonies.
I have related what I saw and what I heard, with the-
general impressions which I was led to form.

In a few instances, when opinions were conveyed to
me which were important in themselves, but which it
might be undesirable to assign to the persons from whom
I heard them, I have altered initials and disguised locali-
ties and circumstances.

The illustrations are from sketches of my own, which,
except so far as they are tolerably like the scenes which
they represent, are without value. They have been made
producible by the skill and care of the engraver, Mr.
Pearson, to whom my warmest thanks are due.

J. A. F.
Onslow Gardens : November 15. 1887.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

Colonial policy— Union or separation — Self-government — Varieties
of condition — The Pacific colonies — The West Indies— Propo-
sals for a West Indian federation — Nature of the population
— American union and British plantations — Original conquest
of the West Indies ......... 1

CHAPTER II.

In the train for Southampton — Morning papers — The new ' Locks-
ley Hall' — Past and present — The 'Moselle' — Heavy weather
— The petrel — The Azores . . . . . . .11

CHAPTER III.

The tropics — Passengers on board — Account of the Darien canal
— Planters' complaints — West 'Indian history — The Spanish
conqUest — Drake and Hawkins — The buccaneers — The pirates
— French and English — Rodney — Battle of April 12 — Peace
with honour — Doers and talkers ...... 23

CHAPTER IV.

First sight of Barbadoes — Origin of the name — Pere Labat —
Bridgetown two hundred years ago— Slavery and Christianity
— Economic crisis — Sugar bounties — Aspect of the streets —
Government House and its occupants — Duties of a governor of
Barbadoes 37

CHAPTER V.

West Indian politeness — Negro morals and felicity — Island of
St. Vincent — Grenada — The harbour — Disappearance of the
whites — An island of black freeholders — Tobago — Dramatic
art — A promising incident ....... 48

viii THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES

CHAPTER VI.

PAGE

Charles Kingsley at Trinidad — 'Lay of the Last Buccaneer' — A
French forban — Adventure at Aves — Mass on board a pirate
ship — Port of Spain — A house in the tropics — A political meet-
ing— Government House — The Botanical Gardens — Kingsley's
rooms — Sugar estates and coolies ...... 59

CHAPTER VII,

A coolie village — Negro freeholds — Waterworks — Pythons — Slavery
— Evidence of Lord Rodney — Future of the negroes — Necessity
of English rule — The Blue Basin — Black boy and crayfish . 75

CHAPTER VIII.

Home Rule in Trinidad — Political aspirations — Nature of the pro-
blem— Crown administration — Colonial governors — A Russian
apologue — Dinner at Government House — ' The Three Fishers '
— Charles Warner — Alternative futures of the colony . . 85

CHAPTER IX.

Barbadoes again — Social condition of the island — Political constitu-
tion— Effects of the sugar bounties — Dangers of general bank-
ruptcy— The Hall of Assembly — Sir Charles Pearson— Society
in Bridgetown — A morning drive — Church of St. John's — Sir
Graham Briggs — An old planter's palace — The Chief Justice
of Barbadoes . 100

CHAPTER X.

Leeward and Windward Islands — The Caribs of Dominica — Visit
of Pere Labat — St. Lucia— The Pitons — The harbour at Castries
— Intended coaling station — Visit to the administrator — The
old fort and barracks— Conversation with an American— Con-
stitution of Dominica — Land at Roseau ..... 129

CHAPTER XL

Curiosities in Dominica — Nights in the tropics — English and Catho-
lic churches — The market place at Roseau — Fishing extraor-
dinary— A storm — Dominican boatmen — Morning walks —
Effects of the Leeward Islands Confederation — An estate culti-
vated as it ought to be — A mountain ride— Leave the island-
Reflections ..... 150

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER XII.

PAGE

The Darien canal — Jamaican mail packet — Captain W. — Retrospect
of Jamaican history. — Waterspout at sea — Hayti — Jacmel — A
walk through the town — A Jamaican planter — First sight of
the Blue Mountains — Port Royal — Kingston — The Colonial
Secretary — Gordon riots — Changes in the Jamaican constitu-
tion 176

CHAPTER XHI.

The English mails — Irish agitation — Two kinds of colonies— Indian
administration — How far applicable in the West Indies — Land
at Kingston— Government House — Dinner party — Interesting
officer — Majuba Hill — 'Mountain station — Kingston curiosities
— Tobacco — Valley in the Blue Mountains . . . . 204

CHAPTER XIV.

Visit to Port Royal— Dockyard — Town — Church — Fort Augusta —
The eyrie in the mountains — Ride to Newcastle — Society in
Jamaica — Religious bodies — Liberty and authority . . 222

CHAPTER XV.

The Church of England in Jamaica — Drive to Castleton — Botanical
Gardens — Picnic by the river — Black women — Ball at Govern-
ment House — Mandeville — Miss Roy — Country Society —
Manners — American visitors — A Moravian missionary — The
modern Radical creed . ...... 237

CHAPTER XVI.

Jamaican hospitality — Cherry Garden — George William Gordon —
The Gordon riots — Governor Eyre — A dispute and its conse-
quences—Jamaican country-house society — Modern specula-
tion— A Spanish fable— Port Royal — The commodore — Naval
theatricals — The modern sailor ...... 255

CHAPTER XVII.

Present state of Jamaica — Test of progress— Resources of the island
— Political alternatives — Black supremacy and probable con-
sequences— The West Indian problem ..... 277

CHAPTER XVIII.

Passage to Cuba — A Canadian commissioner — Havana — The Moro
— The city and harbour— Cuban money — American visitors — ■

x THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES

PAGE

The Cathedral — Tornb of Columbus — New friends — The late
rebellion— Slave emancipation — Spain and progress — A bull
fight 288

CHAPTER XIX.

Hotels in Havana — Sights in the city — Cigar manufactories — West
Indian industries — The Captain-General — The Jesuit college —
Father Viriez — Clubs in Havana — Spanish aristocracy — Sea
lodging house ......... 309

CHAPTER XX.

Return to Havana — The Spaniards in Cuba — Prospects — American
influence — Future of the West Indies — English rumours — Leave
Cuba — The harbour at night — The Bahama Channel — Hayti —
Port au Prince — The black republic — West Indian history . 331

CHAPTER XXI.

Return to Jamaica — Cherry Garden again — Black servants — Social
conditions — Sir Henry Norman — King's House once more —
Negro suffrage — The will of the people — The Irish python —
Conditions of colonial union — Oratory and statesmanship . 350

CHAPTER XXII.

Going home — Retrospect — Alternative courses — Future of the Em-
pire— Sovereignty of the sea — The Greeks — The rights of man
— Plato — The voice of the people — Imperial federation —
Hereditary colonial policy — New Irelands — Effects of party
government 362

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Mountain Crater, Dominica Frontispiece

Blue Basin, Trinidad To face page 82

Morning Walk, Dominica. ....

Port Royal, Jamaica

Valley in the Blue Mountains, Jamaica
Kingston and Harbour, from Cherry Garden
Havana, from the Quarries ....
Port au Prince, Hayti .....

154
194
220
4 266

« 294
« 327

THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES.

CHAPTER I.

Colonial policy — Union or separation — Self-government — Varieties of
condition — The Pacific colonies — The West Indies — Proposals for a
West Indian federation — Nature of the population— American union
and British plantations— Original conquest of the West Indies.

The Colonial Exhibition has come and gone. Delegates
from our great self-governed dependencies have met and
consulted together, and have determined upon a common
course of action for Imperial defence. The British race
dispersed over the world have celebrated the Jubilee of the
Queen with an enthusiasm evidently intended to bear a
special and peculiar meaning. The people of these islands
and their sons and brothers and friends and kinsfolk in
Canada, in Australia, and in New Zealand have declared
with a general voice, scarcely disturbed by a discord, that
they are fellow-subjects of a single sovereign, that they are
united in feeling, united in loyalty, united in interest, and
that they wish and mean to preserve unbroken the integrity
of the British Empire. This is the answer which the democ-
racy has given to the advocates of the doctrine of separation.
The desire for union while it lasts is its own realisation. As
long as we have no wish to part we shall not part, and the
wish can never rise if when there is occasion we can meet and
deliberate together with the same regard for each other's wel-
fare which has been shown in the late conference in London.

2 The English in the West Indies.

Events mock at human foresight, and nothing is certain
but the unforeseen. Constitutional government and an inde-
pendent executive were conferred upon our larger colonies,
with the express and scarcely veiled intention that at the
earliest moment they were to relieve the mother country of
responsibility for them. They were regarded as fledgelings
who are fed only by the parent birds till their feathers are
grown, and are then expected to shift for themselves. They
were provided with the full plumage of parliamentary insti-
tutions on the home pattern and model, and the expectation
of experienced politicians was that they would each at the
earliest moment go off on their separate accounts, and would
bid us a friendly farewell. The irony of fate has turned to
folly the wisdom of the wise. The wise themselves, the same
political party which were most anxious twenty years ago to
see the colonies independent, and contrived constitutions for
them which they conceived must inevitably lead to separation,
appeal now to the effect of those very constitutions in drawing
the Empire closer together, as a reason why a similar method
should be immediately adopted to heal the differences be-
tween Great Britain and Ireland. New converts to any be-
lief, political or theological, are proverbially zealous, and per-
hajDS in this instance they are over-hasty. It does not follow
that because people of the same race and character are drawn
together by equality and liberty, people of different races and
different characters, who have quarrelled for centuries, will
be similarly attracted to one another. Yet so far as our own
colonies are concerned it is clear that the abandonment by
the mother country of all pretence to interfere in their in-
ternal management has removed the only cause which could
possibly have created a desire for independence. We can-
not, even if we wish it ourselves, shake off connections who
cost us nothing and themselves refuse to be divided. Poli-
ticians may quarrel ; the democracies have refused to quarrel ;

Colonial Self- Government. 3

and the result of the wide extension of the suffrage through-
out the Empire has been to show that being one the British
people everywhere intend to remain one. With the same
blood, the same language, the same habits, the same tra-
ditions, they do not mean to be shattered into dishonoured
fragments. All of us, wherever we are, can best manage our
own affairs within our own limits ; yet local spheres of self-
management can revolve round a common centre while there
is centripetal power sufficient to hold them ; and so long as
England ' to herself is true' and continues worthy of her
ancient reputation, there are no causes working visibly above
the political horizon which are likely to induce our self-gov-
erned colonies to take wing and leave us. The strain will
come with the next great war. During peace these colonies
have only experienced the advantage of union with us. They
will then have to share our dangers, and may ask why they
are to be involved in quarrels which are not of their own
making. How they will act then only experience can tell ;
and that there is any doubt about it is a sufficient answer to
those rapid statesmen who would rush at once into the ap-
plication of the same principle to countries whose continuance
with us is vital to our own safety, whom we cannot part with
though they were to demand it at the cannon's moutb.

But the result of the experiment is an encouragement as
far as it has gone to those who would extend self-govern-
ment through the whole of our colonial system. It seems
to lead as a direct road into the ' Imperial Federation '
which has fascinated the general imagination. It removes
friction. We relieve ourselves of responsibilities. If federa-
tion is to come about at all as a definite and effective organi-
sation, the spontaneous action of the different members of
the Empire in a position in which they are free to stay with
us or to leave us as they please, appears the readiest and
perhaps the only means by which it can be brought to pass.

4 The English in the West Indies.

So plausible is the theory, so obviously right would it be
were the problem as simple and the population of all our
colonies as homogeneous as in Australia, that one cannot
wonder at the ambition of politicians to win themselves a
name and achieve a great result by the immediate adoption
of it. Great results generally imply effort and sacrifice.
Here effort is unnecessary and sacrifice is not demanded.
Everybody is to have what he wishes, and the effect is to
come about of itself. When Ave think of India, when we
think of Ireland, prudence tells us to hesitate. Steps once
taken in this direction cannot be undone, even if found to
lead to the wrong place. But undoubtedly, wherever it is
possible the principle of self-government ought to be applied
in our colonies and will be applied, and the danger now is
that it will be tried in haste in countries either as yet unripe
for it or from the nature of things unfit for it. The liberties
which we grant freely to those whom we trust and who do
not require to be restrained, we bring into disrepute if we
concede them as readily to perversity or disaffection or to
those who, like most Asiatics, do not desire liberty, and pros-
per best when they are led and guided.

In this complex empire of ours the problem pi'esents itself
in many shapes, and each must be studied and dealt with
according to its character. There is the broad distinction
between colonies and conquered countries. Colonists are
part of ourselves. Foreigners attached by force to our do-
minions may submit to be ruled by us, but will not alwaya
consent to rule themselves in accordance with our views or
interests, or remain attached to us if we enable them to leave
us when they please. The Crown, therefore, as in India,
rules directly by the police and the army. And there are
colonies which are neither one nor the other, where our own
people have been settled and have been granted the land in
possession with the control of an insubordinate population,

Varieties of Character. 5

themselves claiming political privileges which had to be re-
fused to the rest. This was the position of Ireland, and the
result of meddling theoretically with it ought to have taught
us caution. Again, there are colonies like the West Indies,
either occupied originally by ourselves, as Barbadoes, or taken
by force from France or Spain, where the mass of the popu-
lation were slaves who have been since made free, but where
the extent to which the coloured people can be admitted to
share in the administration is still an unsettled question.
To throw countries so variously circumstanced under an
identical system would be a wild experiment. Whether we
ought to try such an experiment at all, or even wish to try it
and prepare the way for it, depends perhaps on whether we
have determined that under all circumstances the retention
of them under our own flag is indispensable to our safety.

I had visited our great Pacific colonies. Circumstances
led me afterwards to attend more . particularly to the West
Indies. They were the earliest, and once the most prized, of 1
all our distant possessions. They had been won by the most
desperate struggles, and had been the scene of our greatest
naval glories. In the recent discussion on the possibility of
an organised colonial federation, various schemes came under
my notice, in every one of which the union of the Wxest Ind-
ian Islands under a free parliamentary constitution was re-
garded as a necessary preliminary. I was reminded of a con-
versation which I had held seventeen years ago with a high
colonial official specially connected with the West Indian de-
partment, in which the federation of the islands under such
a constitution was spoken of as a measure already determined
on, though with a view to an end exactly the opposite of that
which was now desired. The colonies universally were then
regarded in such quarters as a burden upon our resources, of
which we were to relieve ourselves at the earliest moment.
They were no longer of value to us ; the whole world had be-

6 The English in the West Indies.

come our market ; and whether they were nominally attached
to the Empire, or were independent, or joined themselves to
some other power, was of no commercial moment to us. It
was felt, however, that as long as any tie remained, we should
be obliged to defend them in time of war ; while they, in con-
sequence of their connection, would be liable to attack. The
sooner, therefore, the connection was ended, the better for
them and for us.

By the constitutions which had been conferred upon them,
Australia and Canada, New Zealand and the Cape, were as-
sumed to be practically gone. The same measures were to
be taken with the West Indies. They were not prosperous.
They formed no outlet for British emigration. The white
population was diminishing ; they were dissatisfied ; they lay
close to the great American republic, to which geographically
they more properly belonged. Representative assemblies un-
der the Crown had failed to produce the content expected from
them or to give an impulse to industry. The free negroes
could not long be excluded from the franchise. The black
and white races had not amalgamated and were not inclinine:
to amalgamate. The then recent Gordon riots had been fol-
lowed by the suicide of the old Jamaican constitution. The
government of Jamaica had been flung back upon the
Crown, and the Crown was impatient of the addition to its
obligations. The official of whom I speak informed me that
a decision had been irrevocably taken. The troops were to
be withdrawn from the islands, and Jamaica, Trinidad, and
the English Antilles were to be masters of their own destiny,
either to form into free communities like the Spanish Ameri-
can republics, or join the United States, or to do what they
pleased, with the sole understanding that we were to have no
more responsibilities.

I do not know how far the scheme was matured. To an out-
side spectator it seemed too hazardous to have been seriously

Whites and Blacks. 7

meditated. Yet I was told that it had not been meditated
only but positively determined upon, and that further discus-
sion of a settled question would be fruitless and needlessly
irritating.

Politicians with a favourite scheme are naturally sanguine.
It seemed to me that in a West Indian Federation the black
race would necessarily be admitted to their full rights as citi-
zens. Their numbers enormously preponderated, and the
late scenes in Jamaica were signs that the two colours would
not blend into one, that there might be, and even inevitably
would be, collisions between them which would lead to ac-
tions which we could not tolerate. The white residents and
the negroes had not been drawn together by the abolition of
slavery, but were further apart than ever. The whites, if by
superior intelligence they could gain the upper hand, would
not be allowed to keep it. As little would they submit to be
ruled by a race whom they despised ; and I thought it quite
certain that something would happen which would compel
the British Government to interfere again, whether we liked
it or not. Liberty in Hayti had been followed by a massacre
of the French inhabitants, and the French settlers had
done no worse than we had done to deserve the ill will of
their slaves. Fortunately opinion changed in England be-
fore the experiment could be tried. The colonial policy of
the doctrinaire statesmen was no sooner understood than it
was universally condemned, and they could not press propo-
rsals on the West Indies which the West Indians showed so
little readiness to meet.

So things drifted on, remaining to appearance as they were.
The troops were not recalled. A minor confederation was
formed in the Leeward Antilles. The Windward group was
placed under Barbadoes, and islands which before had gov-
ernors of their own passed under subordinate administrators.
Local councils continued under various condition.;, the popu-

8 The English in the West Indies.

lar element being cautiously and silently introduced. The
blacks settled into a condition of easy-going peasant pro-
prietors. But so far as the white or English interest was con-
cerned, two causes which undermined West Indian prosperity
continued to operate. So long as sugar maintained its price
the planters with the help of coolie labour were able to strug-
gle on ; but the beetroot bounties came to cut from under
them the industry in which they had placed their main de-
pendence ; the reports were continually darker of distress
and rapidly approaching ruin. Petitions for protection were
not or could not be granted. They were losing heart — the
worst loss of all ; while the Home Government, no longer
with a view to separation, but with the hope that it might
produce the same effect which it had produced elsewhere, were
still looking to their old remedy of the extension of the prin-
ciple of self-government. One serious step was taken very
recently towards the re-establishment of a constitution in Ja-
maica. It was assumed that it had failed before because the
blacks were not properly represented. The council was again
made partially elective, and the black vote was admitted on
the widest basis. A power was retained by the Crown of in-
creasing in case of necessity the nominated official members
to a number which would counterbalance the elected mem-
bers ; but the power had not been acted on and was not per-
haps designed to continue, and a restless hope was said to
have revived among the negroes that the day was not far off
when Jamaica would be as Hayti and they would have the
island to themselves.

To a person like myself, to whom the preservation of the
British Empire appeared to be the only public cause in which
just now it was possible to feel concern, the problem was ex-
tremely interesting. I had no prejudice against self-govern-
ment. I had seen the Australian colonies growing under it
in health and strength with a rapidity which rivalled the

The American Union. 9

progress of the American Union itself. I had observed in
South Africa that the confusions and perplexities there di-
minished exactly in proportion as the Home Government
ceased to interfere. I could not hope that as an outsider I
could see my way through difficulties where practised eyes
were at a loss. But it was clear that the West Indies were
suffering, be the cause what it might. I learnt that a party
had risen there at last which was actually in favour of a union
with America, and I wished to find an answer to a question
which I had long asked myself to no purpose. My old friend
Mr. Motley was once speaking to me of the probable acces-
sion of Canada to the American republic. I asked him if he
was sure that Canada would like it. ' Like it ? ' he replied.
' Would I like the house of Baring to take me into partner-
ship ? ' To be a partner in the British Empire appeared to
me to be at least as great a thing as to be a state under the
stars and stripes. What was it that Canada, what was it that
any other colony, would gain by exchanging British citizen-
ship for American citizenship ? What did America offer to
those who joined her which we refused to give or neglected
to give ? Was it that Great Britain did not take her colonies
into partnership at all? was it that while in the United States
the blood circulated freely from the heart to the extremities,
so that 'if one member suffered all the body suffered with it,'
our colonies were simply (as they used to be called) 'planta-
tions,' offshoots from the old stock set down as circumstan-
ces had dictated in various parts of the globe, but vitally de-
tached and left to grow or to wither according to their own
inherent strength ?

At one time the West Indian colonies had been more to us
than such casual seedlings. They had been regarded as
precious jewels, which hundreds of thousands of English
lives had been sacrificed to tear from France and Spain. The
Caribbean Sea was the cradle of the Naval Empire of Great

10 The English in the West Indies.

Britain. There Drake and Hawkins intercepted the golden
stream which flowed from Panama into the exchequer at
Madrid, and furnished Philip with the means to carry on his
war with the Reformation. The Pope had claimed to be lord
of the new world as well as of the old, and had declared that
Spaniards, and only Spaniards, should own territory or carry
on trade there within the tropics. The seamen of England
took up the challenge and replied with cannon shot. It was
not the Crown, it was not the Government, which fought that
battle : it was the people of England, who fought it with
their own hands and their own resources. Adventurers, buc-
caneers, corsairs, privateers, call them by what name we will,
stand as extraordinary but characteristic figures on the stage
of history, disowned or acknowledged by their sovereign as
suited diplomatic convenience. The outlawed pirate of one
year was promoted the next to be a governor and his coun-
try's representative. In those waters the men were formed
and trained who drove the Armada through the Channel into
wreck and ruin. In those waters, in the centuries which fol-
lowed, France and England fought for the ocean empire, and
England won it — won it on the day when her own politicians'
hearts had failed them, and all the powers of the world had
combined to humiliate her, and Rodney shattered the French
fleet, saved Gibraltar, and avenged York Town. If ever the
naval exploits of this country are done into an epic poem —
and since the Iliad there has been no subject better fitted for
such treatment or better deserving it — the West Indies will
be the scene of the most brilliant cantos. For England to
allow them to drift away from her because they have no im-
mediate marketable value, would be a sign that she had lost
the feelings with which great nations always treasure the
heroic traditions of their fathers. When those traditions
come to be regarded as something which concerns them no
longer, their greatness is already on the wane.

CHAPTER H.

In the train for Southampton- -Morning papers — The new ' Locksley
Hall' — Past and present — The 'Moselle' — Heavy weather — The
petrel — The Azores.

The last week in December, when the year 1886 was wan-
ing to its close, I left Waterloo station to join a West Indian
mail steamer at Southampton. The air was frosty ; the fog
lay thick over city and river ; the Houses of Parliament them-
selves were scarcely visible as I drove across Westminster
Bridge in the heavy London vapour — a symbol of the cloud
which was hanging over the immediate political future.
The morning papers were occupied with Lord Tennyson's
new ' Locksley Hall ' and Mr. Gladstone's remarks upon it.
I had read neither ; but from the criticisms it appeared that
Lord Tennyson fancied himself to have seen a change pass
over England since his boyhood, and a change which was not
to his mind. The fruit of the new ideas which were then
rising from the ground had ripened, and the taste was dis-
agreeable to him. The day Avhich had followed that ' august
sunrise ' had not been ' august ' at all ; and ' the beautiful
bold brow of Freedom ' had proved to have something of
brass upon it. The ' use and wont ' England, the England
out of which had risen the men who had won her great posi-
tion for her, was losing its old characteristics. Things which
in his eager youth Lord Tennyson had despised he saw now
that he had been mistaken in despising ; and the new notions
which were to remake the world were not remaking it in si
shape that pleased him. Like Goethe, perhaps he felt that

12 The English in the West Indies.

he was stumbling over the roots of the tree which he had
helped to plant.

The contrast in Mr. Gladstone's article was certainly re-
markable. Lord Tennyson saw in institutions which were
passing away the decay of what in its time had been great
and noble, and he saw little rising in the place of them which
humanly could be called improvement. To Mr. Gladstone
these revolutionary years had been years of the sweeping off
of long intolerable abuses, and of awaking to higher and
truer perceptions of duty. Never, according to him, in any
period of her history had England made more glorious prog-
ress, never had stood higher than at the present moment in
material power and moral excellence. How could it be other-
wise when they were the years of his own ascendency ?

Metaphysicians tell us that we do not know anything as it
really is. "What we call outward objects are but impressions
generated upon our sense by forces of the actual nature of
which we are totally ignorant. We imagine that we hear a
sound, and that the sound is something real which is outside
us ; but the sound is in the ear and is made by the ear, and the
thing outside is but a vibration of air. If no animal existed
with organs of hearing the vibrations might be as before, but
there would be no such thing as sound ; and all our opinions
on all subjects whatsoever were equally subjective. Lord
Tennyson's opinions and Mr. Gladstone's opinions reveal to
us only the nature and texture of their own minds, which
have been affected in this way or that way. The scale has not
been made in which we can weigh the periods in a nation's
life, or measure them one against the other. The past is
gone, and nothing but the bones of it can be recalled. We
but half understand the present, for each age is a chrysalis,
and we are ignorant into what it may develop. We do not
even try to understand it honestly, for we shut our eyes
against what we do not wish to see. I will not despond with

Past and Present. 13

Lord Tennyson. To take a gloomy view of things will not
mend them, and modern enlightenment may have excellent
gifts in store for us which will come by-and-by, but I will not
say that they have come as yet. I will not say that public
life is improved when party spirit has degenerated into an
organised civil war, and a civil war which can never end, for
it renews its life like the giant of fable at every fresh election.
I will not say that men are more honest and more law-abid-
ing when debts are repudiated and law is defied in half the
country, and Mr. Gladstone himself applauds or refuses to
condemn acts of open dishonesty. We are to congratulate
ourselves that duelling has ceased, but I do not know that
men act more honourably because they can be called less
sharply to account. ' Smuggling,' we are told, has disap-
peared also, but the wrecker scuttles his ship or runs it
ashore to cheat the insurance office. The Church may per-
haps be improved in the arrangement of the services and in
the professional demonstrativeness of the clergy, but I am
not sure that the clergy have more influence over the minds
of men than they had fifty years ago, or that the doctrines
which the Church teaches are more powerful over public
opinion. One would not gather that our morality was so su-
perior from the reports which we see in the newspaper, and
girls now talk over novels which the ladies' maids of their
grandmothers might have read in secret but would have
blushed while reading. Each age would do better if it stud-
ied its own faults and endeavoured to mend them instead of
comparing itself with others to its own advantage.

This only was clear to me in thinking over what Mr. Glad-
stone was reported to have said, and in thinking of his own
achievements and career, that there are two classes of men
who have played and still play a prominent part in the world
— those who accomplish great things, and those who talk and
make speeches about them. The doers of things are for the

1<± The English in the West Indies.

most part silent. Those who build up empires or discover
secrets of science, those who paint great pictures or write
great poems, are not often to be found spouting upon plat-
forms. The silent men do the work. The talking men cry
out at what is done because it is not done as they would have
had it, and afterwards take possession of it as if it was their
own property. Warren Hastings wins India for us ; the elo-
quent Burke desires and passionately tries to hang him for
it. At the supreme crisis in our history when America had
revolted and Ireland was defiant, when the great powers of
Europe had coalesced to crush us, and we were staggering
under the disaster at York Town, Rodney struck a blow in
the West Indies which sounded over the world and saved for
Britain her ocean sceptre. Just in time, for the popular
leaders had persuaded the House of Commons that Rodney
ought to be recalled and peace made on any terms. Even in
politics the names of oratorical statesmen are rarely associ-
ated with the organic growth of enduring institutions. The
most distinguished of them have been conspicuous only as
instruments of destruction. Institutions are the slow growths
of centuries. The orator cuts them down in a day. The tree
falls, and the hand that wields the axe is admired and ap-
plauded. The speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero pass
into literature, and are studied as models of language. But
Demosthenes and Cicero did not understand the facts of their
time ; their language might be beautiful, and their senti-
ments noble, but with their fine words and sentiments they
only misled their countrymen. The periods where the ora-
tor is supreme are marked always by confusion and disinte-
gration. Goethe could say of Luther that he had thrown
back for centuries the spiritual cultivation of mankind, by
calling the passions of the multitude to judge of matters
Avhich should have been left to the thinkers. We ourselves
are just now in one of those uneasy periods, and we have de-

The Bow of Ulysses. 15

cided that orators are the fittest people to rule over us. The
constituencies choose their members according to the fluency
of their tongues. Can he make a speech ? is the one test of
competency for a legislator, and the most persuasive of the
whole we make prime minister. We admire the man for his
gifts, and we accept what he says for the manner in which it
isv uttered. He may contradict to-day what he asserted yes-
terday. No matter. He can persuade others wherever he is
persuaded himself. And such is the nature of him that he
can convince himself of anything which it is his interest to
believe. These are the persons who are now regarded as
our wisest. It was not always so. It is not so now with na-
tions who are in a sound state of health. The Americans,
when they choose a President or a Secretary of State or any
functionary from whom they require wise action, do not se-
lect these famous speech-makers. Such periods do not last,
for the condition which they bring about becomes always in-
tolerable. I do not believe in the degeneracy of our race. I
believe the present generation of Englishmen to be capable
of all that their fathers were, and possibly of more ; but we
are just now in a moulting state, and are sick while the pro-
cess is going on. Or to take another metaphor. Tbe bow of
Ulysses is unstrung. The worms have not eaten into the
horn or the moths injured the string, but the owner of the
house is away and the suitors of Penelope Britannia consume
her substance, rivals one of another, each caring only for
himself, but with a common heart in evil. They cannot
string the bow. Only the true lord and master can string it,
and in due time he comes, and the cord is stretched once
more upon the notch, singing to the touch of the finger with
the sharp note of the swallow ; and the arrows fly to their
mark in the breasts of the pretenders, while Pallas Athene
looks on approving from her coign of vantage.

Random meditations of this kind were sent flying through

16 The English in the West Indies.

me by the newspaper articles on Tennyson and Mr. Glad-
stone. The air cleared, and my mind also, as we ran beyond
the smoke. The fields were covered deep with snow ; a
white vapour clung along the ground, the winter sky shining
through it soft and blue. The ponds and canals were hard
frozen, and men were skating and boys were sliding, and all
Avas brilliant and beautiful. The ladies of the forest, the
birch trees beside the line about Farnborough, were hung
with jewels of ice, and glittered like a fretwork wi purple and
silver. It was like escaping out of a nightmare into happy
healthy England once more. In the carriage with me were
several gentlemen ; officers going out to join their regi-
ments ; planters who had been at home on business ; young
sportsmen with rifles and cartridge cases who were hoping
to shoot alligators, &c, all bound like myself for the West
Indian mail steamer. The elders talked of sugar and of
bounties, and of the financial ruin of the islands. I had
heard of this before I started, and I learnt little from them
which I had not known already ; but I had misgivings
whether I was not wandering off after all on a fool's errand.
I did not want to shoot alligators, I did not understand cane
growing or want to understand it, nor was I likely to find a
remedy for encumbered and bankrupt landowners. I was at
an age too when men grow unfit for roaming, and are ex-
pected to stay quietly at home. Plato says that to travel to
any profit one shou Id go between fifty and sixty ; not sooner
because one has one's duties to attend to as a citizen ; not
after because the mind becomes hebetated. The chief object
of going abroad, in Plato's opinion, is to converse with 6<uoi
<xj/S/)£s, inspired men, whom Providence scatters about the
globe, and from whom alone wisdom can be learnt. And I,
alas ! was long past the limit, and 6doi avSpes are not to be
met with in these times. But if not with inspired men, I
might fall in at any rate with sensible men who would talk

' The Moselle? IT

on thing's which I wanted to know. Winter and spring in a
warm climate were pleasanter than a winter and spring at
home ; and as there is compensation in all things, old people
can see some objects more clearly than young people can see
them. They have no interests of their own to mislead their
perception. They have lived too long to believe in any for-
mulas or theories. 'Old age,' the Greek poet says, 'is not
wholly a misfortune. Experience teaches things which the
young know not.' ' Old man at any rate like to think so.

The 'Moselle,' in which I had taken my passage, was a
large steamer of 4,000 tons, one of the best where all are
good — on the West Indian mail line. Her long straight sides
and rounded bottom promised that she would roll, and I may
say that the promise was faithfully kept ; but except to the
stomachs of the inexperienced rolling is no disadvantage.
A vessel takes less water on board in a beam sea when she
yields to the wave than when she standi up stiff and straight
against it. The deck when I went on board was slippery
with ice. There was the usual crowd and confusion before
departure, those who were going out being un distinguishable,
till the bell rang to clear the ship, from the friends who had
accompanied them to take leave. I discovered, however,
to my satisfaction that our party in the cabin would not be
a large one. The West Indians who had come over ::or the
Colonial Exhibition were most of them already gone, i'hey,
along with the rest, had taken back with them a conscious-
ness that their visit had not been wholly in vain, and that
the interest of the old country in her distant possessions
seemed quickening into life once more. The commissioners
from all our dependencies had been feted in the great towns,
and the people had come to Kensington in millions to admire

1 & reicvov, oi>x airavra tm ytjpa Ka.ua. '
r],u.Treipia.
ixtl Tl Aefou twv vtoov crvipiiTepov.

18 The English in the West Indies.

the productions which bore witness to the boundless resources
of British territory. Had it been only a passing emotion of
wonder and pride, or was it a prelude to a more energetic pol-
icy and active resolution ? Any way it was something to be
glad of. Receptions and public dinners and loyal speeches
will not solve political problems, but they create the feeling
of good will which underlies the useful consideration of them.
The Exhibition had served the purpose which it was intended
for. The conference of delegates grew out of it which has
discussed in the happiest temper the elements of our future
relations.

But the Exhibition doors were now closed, and the multi-
tude of admirers or contributors were dispersed or dispersing
to their homes. In the ' Moselle ' we had only the latest
lingerers or the ordinary passengers who went to and fro on
business or pleasure. I observed them with the curiosity
with which one studies persons with whom one is to be shut
up for weeks in involuntary intimacy. One young Demerara
planter attracted my notice, as he had with him a newly mar-
ried and beautiful wife whose fresh complexion would so soon
fade, as it always does in those lands where nature is brilliant
with colour and English cheeks grow pale. I found also to my
surprise and pleasure a daughter of one of my oldest and
dearest friends, who was going out to join her husband in
Trinidad. This was a happy accident to start with. An an-
nouncement printed in Spanish in large letters in a conspicu-
ous position intimated that I must be prepared for habits in-
some of our companions of a less agreeable kind.

' Se suplica a los senores pasajeros de no escupir sobre la
cubierta de popa.'

I may as well leave the words untranslated, but the
' supplication ' is not unnecessary. The Spanish colonists,
like their countrymen at home, smoke everywhere, with the
usual consequences. The captain of one of our mail boats

8 The Moselle: 19

found it necessary to read one of them who disregarded it
a lesson which he would remember. He sent for the
quartermaster with a bucket and a mop, and ordered him to
stay by this gentleman and clean up till he had done.

The wind when we started was light and keen from the
north. The afternoon sky was clear and frosty. Southamp-
ton Water was still as oil, and the sun went down crimson
behind the brown woods of the New Forest. Of the 'Mo-
selle's' speed we had instant evidence, for a fast Government
launch raced us for a mile or two, and off Netley gave up the
chase. We went leisurely along, doing thirteen knots with-
out effort, swept by Calshot into the Solent, and had cleared
the Needles before the last daylight had left us. In a few
days the ice would be gone, and we should lie in the soft air
of perennial summer.

Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes :
Eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum —

But the flying years had not stolen from me the delight of
finding myself once more upon the sea ; the sea which is
eternally young, and gives one back one's own youth and
buoyancy.

Down the Channel the north wind still blew, and the water
was still smooth. We set our canvas at the Needles, and flew
on for three days straight upon our course with a steady
breeze. We crossed ' the Bay ' without the fiddles on the
dinner table ; we were congratulating ourselves that mid-
winter as it was we should reach the tropics and never need
them. I meanwhile made acquaintances among my West
Indian fellow-passengers, and listened to their tale of griev-
ances. The Exhibition had been well enough in its way, but
Exhibitions would not fill an empty exchequer or restore
ruined plantations. The mother country I found was still
regarded as a stepmother, and from more than one quarter I

20 The English in the West Indies.

heard a more than muttered wish that they could be ' taken
into partnership ' by the Americans. They were wasting
away under Free Trade and the sugar bounties. The mother
country gave them fine words, but words were all. If they
belonged to the United States they would have the benefit of
a close market in a country where there were 50,000,000
sugar drinkers. Energetic Americans would come among
them and establish new industries, and would control the un-
manageable negroes. From the most loyal I heard the de-
spairing cry of the Britons, ' the barbarians drive us into the
sea and the sea drives us back upon the barbarians.' They
could bear Free Trade which was fair all round, but not
Free Trade which was made into a mockery by bounties.
And it seemed that their masters in Downing Street an-
swered them as the Romans answered our forefathers. ' We
have many colonies, and we shall not miss Britain. Britain
is far off, and must take care of herself. She brings us re-
sponsibility, and she brings us no revenue ; we cannot tax
Italy for the sake of Britons. We have given them our arms
and our civilisation. We have done enough. Let them do
now what they can or please.' Virtually this is what England
says to the West Indians, or would say if despair made them
actively troublesome, notwithstanding Exhibitions and exj^an-
sive sentiments. The answer from Rome we can now see was
the voice of dying greatness, which was no longer worthy of
the place in the world which it had made for itself in the days
of its strength ; but it doubtless seemed reasonable enough
at the time, and indeed was the only answer which the Rome
of Honorius could give.

A change in the weather cut short our conversation, and
drove half the company to their berths. On the fourth morn-
ing the wind chopped back to the northwest. A beam-sea
set in, and the 'Moselle ' justified my conjectures about her.
She rolled gunwale under, rolled at least forty degrees each

A Storm at Sea. 21

way, and unshipped a boat out of her davits to windward.
The waves were not as high as I have known the Atlantic
produce when in the humour for it, but they were short,
steep, and curling. Tons of water poured over the deck.
The few of us who ventured below to dinner were hit by the
dumb waiters which swung over our heads ; and the living
waiters staggered about with the dishes and upset the soup
into our laps. Everybody was grumbling and miserable.
Driven to my cabin I was dozing on a sofa when I was jerked
off and dropped upon the floor. The noise down below on
these occasions is considerable. The steering chains clank,
unfastened doors slam to and fro, plates and dishes and glass
fall crashing at some lurch which is heavier than usual, with
the roar of the sea underneath as a constant accompaniment.
When a wave strikes the ship full on the quarter and she
staggers from stem to stern, one wonders how any construc-
tion of wood and iron can endure such blows without being
shattered to fragments. And it would be shattered, as I
heard an engineer once say, if the sea was not such a gentle
creature after all. I crept up to the deck house to watch
through the lee door the wild magnificence of the storm.
Down came a great green wave, rushed in a flood over every-
thing, and swept me drenched to the skin down the stairs
into the cabin. I crawled to bed to escape cold, and slid up
and down my berth like a shuttle at every roll of the ship till
I fell into the unconsciousness which is a substitute for sleep,
slept at last really, and woke at seven in the morning to find
the sun shining, and the surface of the ocean still undulating
but glassy calm. The only signs left of the tempest were the
swallow-like petrels skimming to and fro in our wake, picking
up the scraps of food and the plate washings which the cook's
mate had thrown overboard ; smallest and beautifullest of all
the gull tribe, called petrel by our ancestors, who went to
their Bibles more often than we do for their images, in mem-

22 The English in the West Indies.

ory of St. Peter, because they seem for a moment to stand
upon the water when they stoop upon any floating object.1
In the afternoon we passed the Azores, rising blue and fairy-
like out of the ocean ; unconscious they of the bloody battles
which once went on under their shadows. There it was that
Grenville, in the ' Revenge,' fought through a long summer
day alone against a host of enemies, and died there and won
immortal honour. The Azores themselves are Grenville's
monument, and in the memory of Englishmen are associated
for ever with his glorious story. Behind these islands, too,
lay Grenville's comrades, the English privateers, year after
year waiting for Philip's plate fleet. Behind these islands
lay French squadrons waiting for the English sugar ships.
They are calm and silent now, and are never likely to echo
any more to battle thunder. Men come and go and play out
their little dramas, epic or tragic, and it matters nothing to
nature. Their wild pranks leave no scars, and the decks are
swept clean for the next comers.

1 This is the explanation of the name which is given by Dampier.

CHAPTER III

The tropics— Passengers on board — Account of the Darien Canal — Plant-
ers' complaints — West Indian history— The Spanish conquest —
Drake and Hawkins — The buccaneers — The pirates — French and
English — Rodney — Battle of April 12 — Peace with honour — Doers
and talkers.

Another two days and we were in the tropics. The north-
east trade blew behind us, and our own speed being taken off
from the speed of the wind there was scarcely air enough to
fill our sails. The waves went down and the ports were
opened, and we had passed suddenly from winter into per-
petual summer, as Jean Paul says it will be with us in death.
Sleep came back soft and sweet, and the water was warm in
our morning bath, and the worries and annoyances of life
vanished in these sweet surroundings like nightmares when
we wake. How well the Greeks understood the spiritual
beauty of the sea ! ®d\acrcra kXv^cl iravra Tav9p(i)-(Dv KaKoi, says
Euripides. ' The sea washes off all the woes of men.' The
passengers lay about the decks in their chairs reading story
books. The young ones played Bull. The officers flirted
mildly with the pretty young ladies. For a brief interval
care and anxiety had spread their wiugs and flown away, and
existence itself became delightful.

There was a young scientific man on board who interested
me much. He had been sent out from Kew to take charge
of the Botanical Gardenia in Jamaica — was quiet, modest, and
unaffected, understood his own subjects well, and could make
others understand them ; with Lira I had much agreeable

24 The English in the West Indies.

conversation. And there was another singular person who
attracted me even more. I took him at first for an American.
He was a Dane I found, an engineer by profession, and was
on his way to some South American republic. He Avas a long
lean man with grey eyes, red hair, and a laugh as if he so en-
joyed the thing that amused him that he wished to keep it
all to himself, laughing inwardly till he choked and shook
with it. His chief amusement seemed to have lain in watch-
ing the performances of Liberal politicians in various parts
of the world. He told me of an opposition leader in some
parliament whom his rival in office had disposed of by shut-
ting him up in the caboose. ' In the caboose,' he repeated,
screaming with enjoyment at the thought of it, and evidently
wishing that all the parliamentary orators on the globe were
in the same place. In his wanderings he had been lately at
the Darien Canal, and gave me a wonderful account of the
condition of things there. The original estimate of the prob-
able cost had been twenty-six millions of our (English)
money. Most of these millions had been spent already, and
only a fifth of the whole had as yet been executed. The en-
tire cost would not be less, under the existing management,
than one hundred and twenty millions, and he evidently
doubted whether the canal would ever be completed at all,
though professionally he would not confess to such an opin-
ion. The waste and plunder had been incalculable. The
works and the gold that were set moving by them made a
feast for unclean harpies of both sexes from every nation in
the four continents. I liked everything about Mr. ex-
cept his ears, the flaps of which stood out at right angles.
Tom Cringle's Obed may have been something like him.

There was a small black boy among us, evidently of pure
blood, for his hair was wool and his colour black as ink.
His parents must have been well-to-do, for the boy had been
in Europe to be educated. The officers on board and some

Passengers. 25

of the ladies played with hiin as they would play with a
monkey. He had little more sense than a monkey, perhaps
less, and the gestures of him grinning behind gratings and
pushing out his long thin arms between the bars were curi-
ously suggestive of the original from whom we are told now
that all of us came. The worst of it was that, being lifted
above his own people, he had been taught to despise them.
He was spoilt as a black and could not be made into a Avhite,
and this I found afterwards was the invariable and dangerous
consequence whenever a superior negro contrived to raise
himself. He might do well enough himself, but his family
feel their blood as a degradation. His children will not
marry among their own people, and not only will no white
girl marry a negro, but hardly any dowry can be large enough
to tempt a "West Indian white to make a wife of a black lady.
This is one of the most sinister features in the present state
of social life there.

Small personalities cropped up now and then. We had
representatives of all professions among us except the Church
of England clergy. Of them we had not one. The captain,
as usual, read us the service on Sundays on a cushion for
a desk, with the union jack spread over it. On board ship
the captain, like a sovereign, is supreme, and in spiritual
matters as in secular. Drake was the first commander who
carried the theory into practice when he excommunicated his
chaplain. It is the law now, and the tradition has gone on
unbroken. In default of clergy we had a missionary, who
for the most part kept his lips closed. He did open them
once, and at my expense. Apropos of nothing he said to
me, ' I wonder, sir, whether you ever read the remarks upon
you in the newspapers. If all the attacks upon your writings
which I have seen were collected together they would make
an interesting volume.' This was all. He had delivered his
soul and relapsed into silence.

26 The English in the West Indies.

From a Puerto Rico merchant I learnt that, if the English
colonies were in a bad way, the Spanish colonies were in a
worse. His own island, he said, was a nest of squalor,
misery, vice, and disease. Blacks and whites were equally
immoral ; and so far as habits went, the whites were the
filthier of the two. The complaints of the English West Ind-
ians were less sweeping, and, as to immorality between
whites and blacks, neither from my companions in the
' Moselle ' nor anywhere afterward did I hear or see a sign
of it. The profligacy of planter life passed away with
slavery, and the changed condition of the two races makes
impossible any return to the old habits. But they had
wrongs of their own, and were eloquent in their exposition
of them. We had taken the islands from France and Spain
at an enormous expense, and we were throwing them aside
like a worn-out child's toy. We did nothing for them. WTe
allowed them no advantage as British subjects, and when
they tried to do something for themselves, we interposed
with an Imperial veto. The United States, seeing the West
Indian trade gravitating towards New York, had offered them
a commercial treaty, being willing to admit their sugar duty
free, in consideration of the islands admitting in return their
salt fish and flour and notions. A treaty had been actually
agreed to between the United States and the Spanish islands.
A similar treaty had been freely offered to them, which
might have saved them from ruin, and the Imperial Govern-
ment had disallowed it. How, under such treatment, could
we expect them to be loyal to the British connection?

It was a relief to turn back from these lamentations to the
brilliant period of past West Indian history. With the
planters of the present it was all sugar — sugar and the lazy
blacks who were England's darlings and would not work for
them. The handbooks were equally barren. In them I
found nothing but modern statistics pointing to dreary con-

West Indian History. 27

elusions, and in the place of any human interest long stories
of constitutions, suffrages, representative assemblies, powers
of elected members, and powers reserved to the Crown.
Such things, important as they might be, did not touch my
imagination. And to an Englishman, proud of his country,
the West Indies had a far higher interest. Strange scenes
streamed across my memory, and a shadowy procession of
great figures who have printed their names in history.
Columbus and Cortez, Vasco Nuilez, and Las Casas ; the
millions of innocent Indians who, according to Las Casas,
were destroyed out of the islands, the Spanish grinding them
to death in their gold mines ; the black swarms who were
poured in to take their place, and the frightful story of the
slave trade. Behind it all was the European drama of the
sixteenth century — Charles V. and Philip fighting against the
genius of the new era, and feeding their armies with the in-
gots of the new world. The convulsion spread across the
Atlantic. The English Protestants and the French Hugue-
nots took to sea like water dogs, and challenged their ene-
mies in their own special domain. To the popes and the
Spaniards the new world was the property of the Church and
of those who had discovered it. A papal bull bestowed on
Spain all the countries which lay within the tropics west of
the Atlantic — a form of Monroe doctrine, not unreasonable
as long as there was force to maintain it, but the force was
indispensable, and the Protestant adventurers tried the ques-
tion with them at the cannon's mouth. They were of the re-
formed faith all of them, these sea rovers of the early days,
and, like their enemies, they were of a very mixed complex-
ion. The Spaniards, gorged with plunder and wading in
blood, were at the same time, and in their own eyes, crusad-
ing soldiers of the faith, missionaries of the Holy Church,
and defenders of the doctrines which were impiously assailed
in Europe. The privateers from Plymouth and Rochello

28 The English in the West Indies.

paid also for the cost of their expeditions with the pillage of
ships and towns and, the profits of the slave trade ; and they
too were the unlicensed champions of spiritual freedom in
their own estimate of themselves. The gold which was
meant for Alva's troops in Flanders found its way into the
treasure houses of the London companies. The logs of the
voyages of the Elizabethan navigators represent them faith-
fully as they were, freebooters of the ocean in one aspect of
them ; in another, the sea warriors of the Reformation — un-
commissioned, unrecognised, fighting on their own respon-
sibility, liable to be disowned when they failed, while the
Queen herself would privately be a shareholder in the ad-
venture. It was a wild anarchic scene, fit cradle of the spirit-
ual freedom of a new age, when the nations of the earth were
breaking the chains in which king and priest had bound them.

To the Spaniards, Drake and his comrades were corsarios,
robbers, enemies of the human race, to be treated to a short
shrift whenever found and caught. British seamen who fell
into their hands were carried before the Inquisition at Lima
or Carthagena and burnt at the stake as heretics. Four of
Drake's crew were unfortunately taken once at Vera Cruz.
Drake sent a message to the governor-general that if a hair
of their heads was singed he would hang ten Spaniards for
each one of them. (This curious note is at Simancas, where
I saw it.) So great an object of terror at Madrid was El
Draque that he was looked on as an incarnation of the old
serpent, and when he failed in his last enterprise and news
came that he was dead, Lope de Vega sang a hymn of triumph
in an epic poem which he called 'The Dragontea.'

When Elizabeth died and peace was made with Spain, the
adventurers lost something of the indirect countenance which
had so far been extended to them ; the execution of Raleigh
being one among other marks of the change of mind. But
they continued under other names, and no active effort was

West Indian History. 29

made to suppress them. The Spanish Government did in
1627 agree to leave England in possession of Barbadoes, but
the pretentions to an exclusive right to trade continued to be
maintained, and the English and French refused to recognise
it. The French privateers seized Tortuga, an island off St.
Domingo, and they and their English friends swarmed in the
Caribbean Sea as buccaneers or flibustiers. They exchanged
names, perhaps as a symbol of their alliance. 'Flibustier'
was English and a corruption of freebooter. 'Buccaneer'
came from the boucan, or dried beef, of the wild cattle which
the French hunters shot in Espafiola, and which formed the
chief of their sea stores. Boucan became a French verb,
and, according to Labat, was itself the Carib name for the
cashew nut.

War breaking out again in Cromwell's time, Penn and Ven-
ables took Jamaica. The flibustiers from the Tortugas drove
the Spaniards out of Hayti, which was annexed to the French
crown. The comradeship in religious enthusiasm which had
originally drawn the two nations together cooled by degrees,
as French Catholics as well as Protestants took to the trade.
Port Royal became the headquarters of the English bucca-
neers— the last and greatest of them being Henry Morgan,
who took and plundered Panama, was knighted for his ser-
vices, and was afterwards made governor of Jamaica. From
the time when the Spaniards threw open their trade, and
English seamen ceased to be delivered over to the Inquisition,
the English buccaneers ceased to be respectable characters
and gradually drifted into the pirates of later history, when
under their new conditions they produced their more ques-
tionable heroes, the Kidds and Blackbeards. The French
flibustiers continued long after — far into the eighteenth cen-
tury— some of them with commissions as privateers, others
asforbans or unlicensed rovers, but still connived at in Mar-
tinique.

30 The English in the West Indies.

Adventurers, buccaneers, pirates pass across the stage — ■
the curtain falls on them, and rises on a more glorious scene.
Jamaica had become the depot of the trade of England with
the western world, and golden streams had poured into Port
Royal. Barbadoes was unoccupied when England took pos-
session of it, and never passed out of our hands ; but the An-
tilles— the Anterior Isles — which stand like a string of jewels
round the neck of the Caribbean Sea, had been most of them
colonised and occupied by the French, and during the wars
of the last century were the objects of a never ceasing conflict
between their fleets and ours. The French had planted their
language there, they had planted their religion there, and
the blacks of these islands generally still speak the French
patois and call themselves Catholics ; but it was deemed es-
sential to our interests that the Antilles should be not French
but English, and Antigua, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent,
and Grenada were taken and retaken and taken again in a
struggle perpetually renewed. When the American colonies
revolted, the West Indies became involved in the revolu-
tionary hurricane. France, Spain, and Holland — our three
ocean rivals — combined in a supreme effort to tear from us
our Imperial power. The opportunity was seized by Irish
patriots to clamour for Irish nationality, and by the English
Radicals to demand liberty and the rights of man. It was
the most critical moment in later English history. If we had
3rielded to peace on the terms which our enemies offered, and
the English Liberals wished us to accept, the star of Great
Britain would have set for ever.

The West Indies were then under the charge of Rodney,
whose brilliant successes had already made his name famous.
He had done his country more than yeoman's service. He
had torn the Leeward Islands from the French. He had
punished the Hollanders for joining the coalition by taking
the island of St. Eustachius and three millions' worth of

Rodney. 31

stores and money. The patriot party at home led by Fox
and Burke were ill pleased with these victories, for they
wished us to be driven into surrender. Burke denounced
Rodney as he denounced Warren Hastings, and Rodney was
called home to answer for himself. In his absence Deruerara,
the Leeward Islands, St. Eustachius itself, were captured or
recovered by the enemy. The French fleet, now supreme in
the western waters, blockaded Lord Cornwallis at York Town
and forced him to capitulate. The Spaniards had fitted out
a fleet at Havannah, and the Count de Grasse, the French
admiral, fresh from the victorious thunder of the American
cannon, hastened back to refurnish himself at Martinique,
intending to join the Spaniards, tear Jamaica from us, and
drive us finally and completely out of the West Indies. One
chance remained. Rodney was ordered back to his station,
and he went at his best speed, taking all the ships with him
which could then be spared. It was mid-winter. He forced
his way to Barbadoes in five weeks spite of equinoctial
storms. The Whig orators were indignant. They insisted
that we were beaten ; there had been bloodshed enough, and
we must sit down in our humiliation. The Government
yielded, and a peremj^tory order followed on Rodney's track,
' Strike your flag and come home.' Had that fatal command
reached him Gibraltar would have fallen and Hastings's In-
dian Empire would have melted into air. But Rodney knew
that his time was short, and he had been prompt to use it.
Before the order came, the severest naval battle in English
annals had been fought and won. De Grasse was a prisoner,
and the French fleet was scattered into wreck and ruin.

De Grasse had refitted in the Martinique dockyards. He
himself and every officer in the fleet was confident that Eng-
land was at last done for, and that nothing was left but to
gather the fruits of the victory which was theirs already.
Not Xerxes, when he broke through Thermopylae and

32 The English in the West Indies.

watched from the shore his thousand galleys streaming down
to the Gulf of Salainis, was more assured that his prize was
in his hands than De Grasse on the deck of the ' Ville de
Paris,' the finest ship then floating on the seas, when he heard
that Rodney was at St. Lucia and intended to engage him.
He did not even believe that the English after so many re-
verses would venture to meddle with a fleet superior in force
and inspirited with victory. All the Antilles except St. Lucia
were his own. Tobigo, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vin-
cent, Martinique, Dominica, Guadaloupe, Montserrat, Nevis,
Antigua, and St. Kitts, he held them all in proud possession,
a string of gems, each island large as or larger than the Isle
of Man, rising up with high volcanic peaks clothed from base
to crest with forest, carved into deep ravines, and fringed
with luxuriant plains. In St. Lucia alone, lying between St.
Vincent and Dominica, the English flag still flew, and Rod-
ney lay there in the harbour at Castries. On April 8, 1782,
the signal came from the north end of the island that the
French fleet had sailed. Martinique is in sight of St. Lucia,
and the rock is still shown from which Rodney had watched
day by day for signs that they were moving. They were out
at last, and he instantly weighed and followed. The air was
light, and De Grasse was under the high lands of Dominica
before Rodney came up with him. Both fleets were be-
calmed, and the English were scattered and divided by a
current which runs between the islands. A breeze at last
blew off the land. The French were the first to feel it, and
were able to attack at advantage the leading English division.
Had De Grasse ' come down as he ought,' Rodney thought
that the consequences might have been serious. In careless
imagination of superiority they let the chance go by. They
kept at a distance, firing long shots, which as it was did con-
siderable damage. The two following days the fleets ma-
noeuvred in sij?ht of each other. On the nicrht of the elev-

Battle of the Twelfth of April. 33

enth Eodney made signal for the whole fleet to go south un-
der press of sail. The French thought he was flying. He
tacked at two in the morning, and at daybreak found himself
where he wished to be, with the French fleet on his lee quar-
ter. The French looking for nothing but again a distant
cannonade, continued leisurely along under the north high-
lands of Dominica towards the channel which separates that
island from Guadaloupe. In number of ships the fleets were
equal ; in size and complement of crew the French were im-
mensely superior ; and besides the ordinary ships' com-
panies they had twenty thousand soldiers on board who were
to be used in the conquest of Jamaica. Knowing well that »
defeat at that moment would be to England irreparable ruin,
they did not dream that Rodney would be allowed, even if he
wished it, to risk a close and decisive engagement The
English admiral was aware also that his country's fate was
in his hands. It was one of those supreme moments which
great men dare to use and small men tremble at. He had
the advantage of the wind, and could force a battle or de-
cline it, as he pleased. "With clear daylight the signal to
engage was flying from the masthead of the ' Formidable.'
Rodney's ship. At seven in the morning, April 12, 1782, the
whole fleet bore down obliquely on the French line, cutting
it directly in two. Rodney led in person. Having passed
through and broken up their order he tacked again, still
keeping the wind. The French, thrown into confusion, were
unable to reform, and the battle resolved itself into a number
of separate engagements in which the English had the choice
of position.

Rodney in passing through the enemy's lines the first time
had exchanged broadsides with the ' Glorieux,' a seventy-
four, at close range. He had shot away her masts and bow-
sprit, and left her a bare hull ; her flag, however, still flying,
being nailed to a splintered spar. So he left her unable at
3

34 The English in the West Indies.

least to stir ; and after be had gone about came himself yard-
arm to yardarm with the superb 'Ville de Paris,' the pride
of France, the largest ship in the then world, where De Grasse
commanded in person. All day long the cannon roared.
Rodney had on board a favourite bantam cock, which stood
perched upon the poop of the ' Formidable ' through the
whole action, its shrill voice heard crowing through the thun-
der of the broadsides. One by one the French ships struck
their flags or fought on till they foundered and went down.
The carnage on board them was terrible, crowded as they
were with the troops for Jamaica. Fourteen thousand were
reckoned to have been killed, besides the prisoners. The
' Ville de Paris ' surrendered last, fighting desperately after
hope was gone till her masts were so shattered that they
could not bear a sail, and her decks above and below were
littered over with mangled limbs. De Grasse gave up his
sword to Rodney on the ' Formidable's ' quarter-deck. The
gallant ' Glorieux,' unable to fly, and seeing the battle lost,
hauled down her flag, but not till the undisabled remnants
of her crew were too few to throw the dead into the sea.
Other ships took fire and blew up. Half the French fleet
were either taken or sunk ; the rest crawled away for the
time, most of them to be picked up afterwards like crippled
birds.

So on that memorable day was the English Empire saved.
Peace followed, but it was ' peace with honour.' The Amer-
ican colonies were lost ; but England kept her West Indies ;
her flag still floated over Gibraltar ; the hostile strength of
Europe all combined had failed to twist Britannia's ocean
sceptre from her : she sat down maimed and bleeding, but
the wreath had not been torn from her brow, she was still
sovereign of the seas.

The bow of Ulysses was strung in those days. The order
of recall arrived when the work was done. It was proudly

Those who Make Envpi/res. 35

obeyed ; and even the great Burke admitted that no honour
could be bestowed upon Kodney which he had not deserved
at his country's hands. If the British Empire is still to have
a prolonged career before it, the men who make empires are
the men who can hold them together. Oratorical reformers
can overthrow what deserves to be overthrown. Institutions,
even the best of them, wear out, and must give place to
others, and the fine political speakers are the instruments of
their overthrow. But the fine speakers produce nothing of
their own, and as constructive statesmen their paths are
strewed with failures. The worthies of England are the men
who cleared and tilled her fields, formed her laws, built her
colleges and cathedrals, founded her colonies, fought her
battles, covered the ocean with commerce, and spread our
race over the planet to leave a mark upon it which time will
not efface. These men are seen in their work, and are not
heard of in Parliament. "When the account is wound up,
where by the side of them will stand our famous orators ?
What will any one of them have left behind him save the
wreck of institutions which had done their work and had
ceased to serve a useful purpose ? That was their business
in this world, and they did it and do it ; but it is no very
glorious work, not a work over which it is possible to feel any
' fine enthusiasm.' To chop down a tree is easier than to
make it grow. When the business of destruction is once
completed, they and their fame and glory will disappear
together. Our true great ones will again be visible, and
thenceforward will be visible alone.

Is there a single instance in our own or any other history
of a great political speaker who has added anything to
human knowledge or to human worth ? Lord Chatham may
stand as a lonely exception. But except Chatham who is
there? Not one that I know of. Oratory is the spend-
thrift sister of the arts, which decks itself like a strumpet

3G The English in the West Indies.

with the tags and ornaments which it steals from real su-
periority. The object of it is not truth, but anything which
it can make appear truth ; anything which it can persuade
people to believe by calling in their passions to obscure their
intelligence.

CHAPTER IV.

First sight of Barbadoes — Origin of the name — Pere Labat — Bridgetown
two hundred years ago — Slavery and Christianity — Economic crisis —
Sugar bounties — Aspect of the streets — Government House and its oc-
cupants— Duties of a governor of Barbadoes.

England was covered with snow when we left it on Decem-
ber 30. At sunrise on January 12 we were anchored in the
roadstead at Bridgetown, and the island of Barbadoes lay be-
fore us shining in the haze of a hot summer morning. It is
about the size of the Isle of Wight, cultivated so far as eye
could see with the completeness of a garden ; no mountains
in it, scarcely even high hills, but a surface pleasantly undu-
lating, the prevailing colour a vivid green from the cane fields ;
houses in town and country white from the coral rock of
which they are built, but the glare from them relieved by
heavy clumps of trees. What the trees were I had yet to dis-
cover. You could see at a glance that the island was as
thickly peopled as an anthill. Not an inch of soil seemed to
be allowed to run to waste. Two hundred thousand is, I be-
lieve, the present number of Barbadians, of whom nine-tenths
are blacks. They refuse to emigrate. They cling to their
home with innocent vanity as though it was the finest country
in the world, and multiply at a rate so rapid that no one likes
to think about it. Labour at any rate is abundant and cheap.
In Barbadoes the negro is willing enough to work, for he has
no other means of living. Little land is here allowed him to
grow his yams upon. Almost the whole of it is still held by
the whites in large estates, cultivated by labourers on the old

38 The English in the West Indies.

system, and, it is to be admitted, cultivated most admirably.
If the West Indies are going to ruin, Barbadoes, at any rate,
is being ruined with a smiling face. The roadstead was
crowded with shipping — large barques, steamers, and brigs,
schooners of all shapes and sorts. The training squadron had
come into the bay for a day or to on their way to Trinidad,
four fine ships, conspicuous by their white ensigns, the square-
ness of yards, and generally imposing presence. Boats were
flying to and fro under sail or with oars, officials coming off
in white calico dress, with awnings over the stern sheets and
chattering crews of negroes. Notwithstanding these exotic
symptoms, it was all thoroughly English ; we were under the
guns of our own men-of-war. The language of the Anglo-
Barbadians was pure English, the voices without the small-
est transatlantic intonation. On no one of our foreign pos-
sessions is the print of England's foot more strongly impressed
than on Barbadoes. It has been ours for two centuries and
three quarters, and was organized from the first on English
traditional lines, with its constitution, its parishes and parish
churches and churchwardens, and schools and parsons, all on
the old model; which the unprogressive inhabitants have
been wise enough to leave undisturbed.

Little is known of the island before we took possession of
it — so little that the origin of the name is still uncertain.
Barbadoes, if not a corruption of some older word, is Spanish
or Portuguese, and means ' bearded.' The local opinion is
that it refers to a banyan or fig tree which is common there,
and which sends down from its branches long hairs or fibres
supposed to resemble beards. I disbelieve in this derivation.
Every Spaniard whom I have consulted confirms my own im-
pression that 'barbados ' standing alone could no more refer
to trees than ' barbati ' standing alone could refer to trees in
Latin. The name is a century older than the English occu-
pation, for I have seen it in a Spanish chart of 1525. The

Past History. 39

question is of some interest, since it perhaps implies that at
the first discovery there was a race of bearded Caribs there.
However this may be, Barbadoes, after we became masters of
it, enjoyed a period of unbroken prosperity for two hundred
years. Before the conquest of Jamaica, it was the principal
mart of our West Indian trade ; and even after that conquest,
when all Europe drew its new luxury of sugar from these
islands, the wealth and splendour of the English residents at
Bridgetown astonished and stirred the envy of every passing
visitor. Absenteeism as yet was not. The owners lived on
their estates, governed the island as magistrates unpaid for
their services, and equally unpaid, took on themselves the de-
fences of the island. Pere Labat, a French missionary, paid
a visit to Barbadoes at the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury. He was a clever, sarcastic kind of man, with fine liter-
ary skill, and describes what he saw with a jealous apprecia-
tion which he intended to act upon his own countrymen.
The island, according to him, was running over with wealth,
and was very imperfectly fortified. The jewellers' and silver-
smiths' shops in Bridgetown were brilliant as on the Paris
boulevards. The port was full of ships, the wharves and
warehouses crammed with merchandise from all parts of the
globe. The streets were handsome, and thronged with men
of business, who were piling up fortunes. To the Father
these sumptuous gentlemen were all most civil. The gov-
ernor, an English milor, asked him to dinner, and talked
such excellent French that Labat forgave him his nationality.
The governor, he said, resided in a fine palace. He had a
well furnished library, was dignified, courteous, intelligent,
and lived in state like a prince. A review was held for the
French priest's special entertainment, of the Bridgetown cav-
alry. Five hundred gentlemen turned out from this one dis-
trict admirably mounted and armed. Altogether in the isl-
and lie says that there were 3,000 horse and 2,000 foot, every

40 The English in the West Indies.

one of them of course white and English. The officers
struck him particularly. He met one who had been five
years a prisoner in the Bastille, and had spent his time there
in learning mathematics. The planters opened their houses
to him. Dinners then as now were the received form of Eng-
lish hospitality. They lived well, Labat says. They had all
the luxuries of the tropics, and they had imported the par-
tridges which they were so fond of from England. They had
the costliest and choicest wines, and knew how to enjoy them.
They dined at two o'clock, and their dinner lasted four hours.
Their mansions were superbly furnished, and gold and silver
plate, he observed with an eye to business, was so abundant
that the plunder of it would pay the cost of an expedition for
the reduction of the island.

There was another side to all this magnificence which also
might be turned to account. There were some thousands of
wretched Irish, who had been transplanted thither after the
last rebellion, and were bound under articles to labour.
These might be counted on to rise if an invading force ap-
peared ; and there were 60,000 slaves, who would rebel also
if they saw hope of success. They were ill fed and hard
driven. On the least symptom of insubordination they were
killed without mercy ; sometimes they were burnt alive, or
Avere hung up in iron cages to die.1 In the French and
Spanish islands care was taken of the souls of the poor creat-
ures. They Avere taught their catechism, they were baptised,

1 Labat seems to say that they were hung up alive in these cages, and
left to die there. He says elsewhere, and it may be hoped that the ex-
planation is the truer one, that the recently imported negroes often de-
stroyed themselves, in the belief that when dead they would return to
their own country. In the French islands as well as the English, the
bodies of suicides were exposed in these cages, from which they could
not be stolen, to convince the poor people of their mistake by their own
eyes. He says that the contrivance was successful, and that after this
the slaves did not destroy themselves any more.

Slavery and Christianity. 41

and attended mass regularly. The Anglican clergy, be said
with professional malice, neither baptised them nor taught
them anything, but regarded them as mere animals. To keep
Christians in slavery they held would be wrong and indefen-
sible, and they therefore met the difficulty by not making
their slaves into Christians. That baptism made any essen-
tial difference, however, he does not insist. By the side of
Christianity, in the Catholic islands, devil worship and witch-
craft went on among the same persons. No instance had ever
come to his knowledge of a converted black who returned to
his country who did not throw away his Christianity just as
he would throw away his clothes ; and as to cruelty and im-
morality, he admits that the English at Barbadoes were no
worse than his own people at Martinique.

In the collapse of West Indian prosperity which followed
on emancipation, Barbadoes escaped the misfortunes of the
other islands. The black population being so dense, and the
place itself being so small, the squatting system could not be
tried ; there was plenty of labour always, and the planters
being relieved of the charge of their workmen when they
were sick or worn out, had rather gained than lost by the
change. Barbadoes, however, was not to escape for ever,
and was now having its share of misfortunes. It is danger-
ous for any country to commit its fortunes to an exclusive
occupation. Sugar was the most immediately lucrative of
all the West Indian productions. Barbadoes is exceptionally
well suited to sugar-growing. It has no mountains and no
forests. The soil is clean and has been carefully attended to
for two hundred and fifty years. It had been owned during
the present century by gentlemen who for the most part
lived in England on the profits of their properties, and left
the in to be managed by agents and attorneys. The method
of management was expensive. Their own habits were ex-
pensive. Their incomes, to which they had lived up, had

42 The English in the JVest Indies.

been cut short lately by a series of bad seasons. Money had
been borrowed at high interest year after year to keep the
estates and their owners going. On the top of this came the
beetroot competition backed up by a bounty, and the Bar-
badian sugar interest, I was told, had gone over a precipice.
The unencumbered resident proprietors could barely keep
their heads above water. The returns on three-quarters of
the properties on the island no longer sufficed to pay the ex-
penses of cultivation and the interest of the loans which had
been raised upon them. There was impending a general
bankruptcy which might break up entirely the present sys-
tem and leave the negroes for a time without the wages
which were the sole dependence.

A very dark picture had thus been drawn to me of the
prospects of the poor little island which had been once so
brilliant. Nothing could be less like it than the bright
sunny landscape which we saw from the deck of our vessel.
The town, the shipping, the pretty villas, the woods, and the
wide green sea of waving cane had no suggestion of ruin
about them. If the ruin was coming, clearly enough it had
not yet come. After breakfast we went on shore in a boat
with a white awning over it, rowed by a crew of black boat-
men, large, fleshy, shining on the skin with ample feeding
and shining in the face with innocent happiness. They
rowed well. They were amusing. There was a fixed tariff,
and they were not extortionate. The temperature seemed
to rise ten degrees when we landed. The roads were blind-
ing white from the coral dust, the houses were white, the
sun scorching. The streets were not the streets described
by Labat ; no splendid magazines or jewellers' shops like
those in Paris or London ; but there were lighters at the
quays loading or unloading, carts dashing along with mule
teams and making walking dangerous ; signs in plenty of
life and business ; few white faces, but blacks and mulattoes

The Streets of Bridgetown. 43

swarming. The houses were substantial, though in want of
paint. The public buildings, law courts, hall of assembly,
&c, were solid and handsome, nowhere out of repair, though
with something to be desired in point of smartness. The
market square would have been well enough but for a statue
of Lord Nelson which stands there, very like, but small and
insignificant, and for some extraordinary reason they have
painted it a bright pea-green.

We crept along in the shade of trees and warehouses till
we reached the principal street. Here my friends brought
me to the Icehouse, a sort of club, with reading rooms and
dining rooms, and sleeping accommodation for members from
a distance who do not like colonial hotels. Before anything
else could be thought of I was introduced to cocktail, with
which I had to make closer acquaintance afterwards, cocktail
being the established corrective of West Indian languor,
without which life is impossible. It is a compound of rum,
sugar, lime juice, Angostura bitters, and what else I know
not, frisked into effervescence by a stick, highly agreeable to
the taste and effective for its immediate purpose. Cocktail
over, and walking in the heat being a thing not to be thought
of, I sat for two hours in a balcony watching the people, who
were thick as bees in swarming time. Nino-tenths of them
were pure black ; you rarely saw a white face, but still less
would you see a discontented one, imperturbable good hu-
mour and self-satisfaction being written on the features of
everyone. The women struck me especially. They were
smartly dressed in white calico, scrupulously clean, and
tricked out with ribands and feathers ; but their figures were
so good and they carried themselves so well and gracefully,
that, although they might make themselves absurd, they
could not look vulgar. Like the Greek and Etruscan women,
they are trained from childhood to carry heavy weights on
their heads. They are thus perfectly upright, and plant

44 The English in the West Indies.

their feet firmly and naturally on the ground. They might
serve for sculptors' models, and are well aware of it. There
were no signs of poverty. Old arid young seemed well fed.
Some had brought in baskets of fruit, bananas, oranges, pine
apples and sticks of sugar cane ; others had yams and sweet
potatoes from their bits of garden in the country. The men
were active enough driving carts, wheeling barrows, or selling
flying fish, which are caught off the island in shoals and are
cheaper than herrings in Yarmouth. They chattered like
a flock of jackdaws, but there was no quarrelling ; not a
drunken man was to be seen, and all was merriment and
good humour. My poor downtrodden black brothers and
sisters, so far as I could judge from this first introduction,
looked to me a very fortunate class of fellow-creatures.

Government House, where we went to luncheon, is a large,
airy building shaded by heavy trees with a garden at the
back of it. West Indian houses, I found afterwards, are all
constructed on the same pattern, the object being to keep
the sun out and let in the wind. Long verandahs or galleries
run round them protected by green Venetian blinds which
can be opened or closed at pleasure ; the rooms within with
polished floors, little or no carpet, and contrivances of all
tkinds to keep the air in continual circulation. In the sub-
dued green light, human figures lose their solidity and look
as if they were creatures of air also.

Sir Charles Lees and his lady were all that was polite and
hospitable. They invited me to make their house 1113' home
during my stay, and more charming host and hostess it
would have been impossible to find or wish for. There was
not the state which Labat described, but there was the per-
fection of courtesy, a courtesy which must have belonged to
their natures, or it would have been overstrained long since
by the demands made upon it. Those who have looked on
at a skating ring will have observed an orange or some

Duties of a Governor. 45

such object in the centre round which the evolutions are de-
scribed, the ice artist sweeping out from it in long curves to
the extreme circumference, curving back on interior arcs till
he gains the orange again, and then off once more on a fresh
departure. Barbadoes to the West Indian steam navigation
is like the skater's orange. All mails, all passengers from
Europe, arrive at Barbadoes first. There the subsidiary
steamers catch them up, bear them north or south to the
Windward or Leeward Isles, and on their return bring them
back to Carlisle Bay. Every vessel brings some person or
persons to whom the Governor is called on to show hospital-
ity. He must give dinners to the officials and gentry of the
island, he must give balls and concerts for their ladies, he
must entertain the officers of the garrison. When the West
Indian squadron or the training squadron drop into the
roadstead, admirals, commodores, captains must all be in-
vited. Foreign ships of war go and come continually,
Americans, French, Spaniards, or Portuguese. Presidents
of South American republics, engineers from Darien, all
sorts and conditions of men who go to Europe in the English
mail vessels, take their departure from Carlisle Bay, and if
they are neglected regard it as a national affront. Cataracts
of champagne must flow if the British name is not to be dis-
credited. The expense is unavoidable and is enormous,
while the Governor's very moderate salary is found too large
by economic politicians, and there is a cry for reduction
of it,

I was of course most grateful for Sir Charles's invitation
to myself. From him, better perhaps than from anyone, I
could learn how far the passionate complaints which I had
heard about the state of the islands were to be listened to as
accounts of actual fact. I found, however, that I must post-
pone both this particular pleasure and my stay in Barbadoes
itself till a later opportunity. My purpose had been to re-

46 The English in the West Indies.

main there till I had given it ah the time which I could spare,
thence to go on to Jamaica, and from Jamaica to return at
leisure round the Antilles. But it had been ascertained that
in Jamaica there was small-pox. I suppose that there gener-
ally is small-pox there, or typhus fever, or other infectious
disorder. But spasms of anxiety assail periodically the souls
of local authorities. Vessels coming from Jamaica had been
quarantined in all the islands, and I found that if I proceeded
thither as I proposed, I should be refused permission to land
afterwards in any one of the other colonies. In my perplexity
my Trinidad friends invited me to accompany them at once
to Port of Spain. Trinidad was the most thriving, or was at
all events the least dissatisfied, of all the British possessions.
I could have a glance at the Windward Islands on the way.
I could afterwards return to Barbadoes, where Sir Charles
assured me that I should still find a room waiting for me.
The steamer to Trinidad sailed the same afternoon. I had
to decide in haste, and I decided to go. Our luncheon over,
we had time to look over the pretty gardens at Government
House. There were great cabbage palms, cannon-ball trees,
mahogany trees, almond trees, and many more which were
wholly new acquaintances. There was a grotto made by
climbing plants and creepers, with a fountain playing in the
middle of it, where orchids hanging on wires threw out their
clusters of flowers for the moths to fertilise, ferns waved their
long fronds in the dripping showers, humming birds cooled
their wings in the spray, and flashed in and out like rubies
and emeralds. Gladly would I have lingered there, at least
for a cigar, but it could not be ; we had to call on the Com-
mander of the Forces, Sir C. Pearson, the hero of Ekowe in
the Zulu war. Him, too, I was to see again, and hear inter-
esting stories from about our tragic enterprise in the Trans-
vaal. For the moment my mind was filled sufficiently with
new impressions. One reads books about places, but the

New Impressions. 47

images which they create are always unlike the real object.
All that I had seen was absolutely new and unexpected. I
was glad of an opportunity to readjust the information which
I had brought with me. We joined our new vessel before
sunset, and we steamed away into the twilight.

CHAPTER V.

West Indian politeness — Negro morals and felicity — Island of St. Yin-
cent — Grenada — The harbour — Disappearance of the whites— An
island of black freeholders — Tobago — Dramatic art — A promising in-
cident.

West Indian civilisation is old-fashioned, and has none of
the pushing manners which belong to younger and perhaps
more thriving communities. The West Indians themselves,
though they may be deficient in energy, are uniformly ladies
and gentlemen, and all their arrangements take their com-
plexion from the general tone of society. There is a refine-
ment visible at once in the subsidiary vessels of the mail ser-
vice which ply among the islands. They are almost as large
as those which cross the Atlantic, and never on any line in
the world have I met with officers so courteous and culti-
vated. The cabins were spacious and as cool as a tempera-
ture* of 80°, gradually rising as we went south, would permit.
Punkahs waved over us at dinner. In our berths a single
sheet was all that was provided for us, and this was one more
than we needed. A sea was running when we cleared out
from under the land. Among the cabin passengers was a
coloured family in good circumstances moving about with
nurses and children. The little things, who had never been
at sea before, sat on the floor, staring out of their large help-
less black eyes, not knowing what was the matter with them.
Forward there were perhaps two or three hundred coloured
people going from one island to another, singing, dancing,
and chattering all night long, as radiant and happy as care-

Negro Morals. 49

lessness and content could make them. Sick or not sick
made no difference. Nothing could disturb the impertur-
bable good humour and good spirits.

It was too hot to sleep ; we sat several of us smoking on
deck, and I learnt the first authentic particulars of the pres-
ent manner of life of these much misunderstood people. Ev-
idently they belonged to a race far inferior to the Zulus and
Caffres, whom I had known in South Africa. They were more
coarsely formed in limb and feature. They would have been
slaves in their own country if they had not been brought to
ours, and at the worst had lost nothing by the change. They
were good-natured, innocent, harmless, lazy perhaps, but not
more lazy than is perfectly natural when even Europeans must
be roused to activity by cocktail.

In the Antilles generally, Barbadoes being the only excep-
tion, negro families have each their cabin, their garden ground,
their grazing for a cow. They live surrounded by most of
the fruits which grew in Adam's pai*adise — oranges and plan-
tains, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nuts, though not apples. Their
yams and cassava grow without effort, for the soil is easily
worked and inexhaustibly fertile. The curse is taken off from
nature, and like Adam again they are under the covenant of
innocence. Morals in the technical sense they have none,
but they cannot be said to sin, because they have no knowl-
edge of a law, and therefore they can commit no breach of the
law. They are naked and not ashamed. They are mar-
ried as they call it, but not parsoned. The woman prefers a
looser tie that she may be able to leave a man if he treats her
unkindly. Yet they are not licentious. I never saw an im-
modest look in one of their faces, and never heard of any
venal profligacy. The system is strange, but it answers. A
missionary told me that a connection rarely turns out well
which begins with a legal marriage. The children scramble
up anyhow, and shift for themselves like chickens as soon as
4

50 The English in the West Indies.

they are able to peck. Man}' die in this way by eating un-
wholesome food, but also many live, and those who do live
grow up exactly like their parents. It is a very peculiar state
of things, not to be understood, as priest and missionary agree,
without long acquaintance. There is evil, but there is not
the demoralising effect of evil. They sin, but they sin only
as animals, without shame, because there is no sense of doing
wrong. They eat the forbidden fruit, but it brings with it
no knowledge of the difference between good and evil. They
steal, but if detected they fall back upon the Lord. It was
de will of de Lord that they should do this or that. De Lord
forbid that they should go against his holy pleasure. In fact
these poor children of darkness have escaped the consequences
of the Fall, and must come of another stock after all.

Meanwhile they are perfectly happy. In no part of the
globe is there any peasantry whose every want is so com-
pletely satisfied as her Majesty's black subjects in these West
Indian Islands. They have no aspirations to make them rest-
less. They have no guilt upon their consciences. They have
food for the picking up. Clothes they need not, and lodging
in such a climate need not be elaborate. Thay have perfect
liberty, and are safe from dangers, to Avhich if left to them-
selves they would be exposed, for the English rule prevents
the strong from oppressing the weak. In their own country
they would have remained slaves to more warlike races. In
the West Indies their fathers underwent a bondage of a cen-
tury or two, lighter at its worst than the easiest form of it in
Africa ; their descendants in return have nothing now to do
save to laugh and sing and enjoy existence. Their quarrels,
if they have any, begin and end in words. If happiness is
the be all and end all of life, and those who have most of it
have most completely attained the object of their being, the
' nigger ' who now basks among the ruins of the West Indian
plantations is the snpremest specimen of present humanity.

St. Vincent. 51

We retired to our berths at last. At waking we were at
anchor off St. Vincent, an island of volcanic mountains robed
in forest from shore to crest. Till late in the last century
it was the headquarters of the Caribs, who kept up a savage
independence there, recruited by runaway slaves from Bar-
badoes or elsewhere. Brandy and Sir Ralph Abercrombie
reduced them to obedience in 1796, and St. Vincent throve
tolerably down to the days of free trade. Even now when I
saw it, Kingston, the principal town, looked pretty and well
to do, reminding me, strange to say, of towns in Norway,
the houses stretching along the shore painted in the same
tints of blue or yellow or pink, with the same red-tiled roofs,
the trees coming down the hillsides to the water's edge, villas
of modest pretensions shining through the foliage, with the
patches of cane fields, the equivalent in the landscape of the
brilliant Norwegian grass. The prosperity has for the last
forty years waned and waned. There are now two thousand
white people there, and forty thousand coloured people, and
the proportion alters annually to our disadvantage. The
usual remedies have been tried. The constitution has been
altered a dozen times. Just now I believe the Crown is try-
ing to do without one, having found the results of the elec-
tive principle not encouraging, but we shall perhaps revert to
it before long ; any way, the tables show that each year the
trade of the island decreases, and will continue to decrease
while the expenditure increases and will increase.

I did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful
picture the island was best seen from the deck. The charac-
teristics of the people are the same in all the Antilles, and
could be studied elsewhere. The bustle and confusion in
the ship, the crowd of boats round the ladder, the clamour
of negro men's tongues, and the blaze of colours from the
negro women's dresses, made up together a scene sufficiently
entertaining for the hour which we remained. In the middle

52 The English in the West Indies.

of it the Governor, Mr. S , came on board with another

official. They were going on in the steamer to Tobago,
which formed part of his dominions.

Leaving St. Vincent, we were all the forenoon passing the
Grenadines, a string of small islands fitting into their proper
place in the Antilles semicircle, but as if Nature had forgot-
ten to put them together or else had broken some large
islaud to pieces, and scattered them along the line. Some
were large enough to have once carried sugar plantations,
and are now made over wholly to the blacks ; others were
fishing stations, droves of whales during certain months fre-
quenting these waters ; others were mere rocks, amidst
which the white-sailed American coasting schooners were
beating up against the north-east trade. There was a stiff
breeze, and the sea was white with short curling waves, but
we were running before it and the wind kept the deck fresh.
At Grenada, the next island, we were to go on shore.

Grenada was, like St. Vincent, the home for centuries of
man-eating Caribs, French for a century and a half, and
finally, after many desperate struggles for it, was ceded to
England at the peace of Versailles. It is larger than St. Vin-
cent, though in its main features it has the same character.
There are lakes in the hills, and a volcanic crater not wholly
quiescent ; but the especial value of Grenada, which made us
fight so hardly to win it, is the deep and landlocked harbour,
the finest in all the Antilles.

Pere Labat, to whose countrymen it belonged at the time
of his own visit there, says that ' if Barbadoes had such a
harbour as Grenada it would be an island without a rival in
the world. If Grenada belonged to the English, who knew
how to turn to profit natural advantages, it would be a rich
and powerful colony. In itself it was all that man could de-
sire. To live there was to live in paradise.' Labat found
the island occupied by countrymen of his own, ' paisans aisez,'

Grenada. 53

he calls them, growing their tobacco, their indigo and scarlet
rocou, their pigs and their poultry, and contented to be
without sugar, without slaves, and without trade. The
change of hands from which he expected so much had ac-
tually come about. Grenada did belong to the English, and
had belonged to us ever since Rodney's peace. I was anx-
ious to see how far Labat's prophecy had been fulfilled.

St. George's, the ' capital,' stands on the neck of a penin-
sula a mile in length, which forms one side of the harbour.
Of the houses, some look out to sea, some inwards upon the
carenage, as the harbour is called. At the point there was a
fort, apparently of some strength, on which the British flag
was flying. We signalled that we had the Governor on
board, and the fort replied with a puff of smoke. Sound there
was none or next to none, but we presumed that it had
come from a gun of some kind. "We anchored outside. Mr.

S landed in an official boat, with two flags, to distinguish

it from a missionary's boat, which had only one. The crews
of a dozen other boats then clambered up the gangway to
dispute possession of the rest of us, shouting, swearing, ly-
ing, tearing us this way and that way as if we were carcases
and they wild beasts wanting to dine upon us. We engaged
a boat for ourselves as we supposed ; we had no sooner en-
tered it than the scandalous boatman proceeded to take in as
many more passengers as it would hold. Remonstrance be-
ing vain, we settled the matter by stepping into the boat
next adjoining, and amidst howls and execrations we were
borne triumphantly off and were pulled in to the land.

Labat had not exaggerated the beauty of the landlocked
basin into which we entered on rounding the point. On
three sides wooded hills rose high till they passed into
mountains ; on the fourth was the castle with its slopes and
batteries, the church and town beyond it, and everywhere
luxuriant tropical forest trees overhanging the violet-coloured

54 The English in the West Indies.

water. I could well understand the Frenchman's delight
when he saw it, and also the satisfaction with which he would
now acknowledge that he had been a shortsighted prophet.
The English had obtained Grenada, and this is what they
had made of it. The forts which had been erected by his
countrymen had been deserted and dismantled ; the castle
on which we had seen our flag flying was a ruin ; the walls
were crumbling and in many places had fallen down. One
solitary gun was left, but that was honeycombed and could
be fired only with half a charge to salute with. It was true
that the forts had ceased to be of use, but that was because
there was nothing left to defend. The harbour is, as I said,
the best in the "West Indies. There was not a vessel in it,
nor so much as a boat-yard where a spar could be replaced
or a broken rivet mended. Once there had been a line of
wharves, but the piles had been eaten by worms and the plat-
forms had fallen through. Round us when we landed were
unroofed warehouses, weed-choked courtyards, doors gone,
and window frames fallen in or out. Such a scene of desola-
tion and desertion I never saw in my life save once, a few
weeks later at Jamaica. An Euglish lady with her children
had come to the landing place to meet my friends. They,
too, were more like wandering ghosts than human beings
with warm blood in them. All their thoughts were on going
home — home out of so miserable an exile.

Nature had been simply allowed by us to resume posses-
sion of the island. Here, where the cannon had roared, and
ships and armies had fought, and the enterprising English
had entered into occupancy, under which, as we are proud
to fancy, the waste places of the earth grow green, and in-
dustry and civilisation follow as its inevitable fruit, all was
now silence. Not Babylon itself, with its bats and owls, was
more dreary and desolate. And this was an English Crown
colony, as rich in resources as any area of soil of equal size in

Grenada. 55

the world. England had demanded and seized the responsi-
bility of managing it — this was the result.

A gentleman, who for some purpose was a passing resident
in the island, had asked us to dine with him. His house was
three or four miles inland. A good road remained as a
legacy from other times, and a pair of horses and a phaeton
carried us swiftly to his door. The town of St. George's had
once been populous, and even now there seemed no want of
people, if mere numbers sufficed. We passed for half a mile
through a straggling street, where the houses were evidently
occupied though unconscious for many a year of paint or re-
pair. They were squalid and dilapidated, but the luxuriant
bananas and orange trees in the gardens relieved the ugliness
of their appearance. The road when we left the town was
overshadowed with gigantic mangoes planted long ago, with
almond trees and cedar trees, no relations of our almonds or
our cedars, but the most splendid ornaments of the West In-
dian forest. The valley up which we drove was beautiful,
and the house, when we reached it, showed taste and culture.
Mr. had rare trees, rare flowers, and was taking advan-
tage of his temporary residence in the tropics to make ex-
periments in horticulture. He had been brought there, I
believe, by some necessities of business. He told us that
Grenada was now the ideal country of modern social reform-
ers. It had become an island of pure peasant proprietors.
The settlers, who had once been a thriving and wealthy com-
munity, had melted away. Not more than six hundred Eng-
glish were left, and these were clearing out at their best
speed. They had sold their estates for anything which they
could get. The free blacks had bought them, and about
8,000 negro families, say 40,000 black souls in all, now shared
the soil between them. Each family lived independently,
growing coffee and cocoa and oranges, and all were doing
very well. The possession of property had brought a sense

56 The English in the West Indies.

of its rights with it. They were as litigious as Irish peasants ;
everyone was at law with his neighbour, and the island was
a gold mine to the Attorney-General ; otherwise they were
quiet harmless fellows, and if the politicians would only let
them alone, they would be perfectly contented, and might
eventually, if wisely managed, come to some good. To set
up a constitution in such a place was a ridiculous mockery,
and would only be another name for swindling and jobbery.
Black the island was, and black it would remain. The con-
ditions were never likely to arise which would bring back a
European population ; but a governor who was a sensible
man, who would reside and use his natural influence, could
manage it with perfect ease. The island belonged to Eng-
land ; we were responsible for what we made of it, and for
the blacks' own sakes we ought not to tiy experiments upon
them. They knew their own deficiencies, and would infin-
itely prefer a wise English ruler to any constitution which
could be offered them. If left entirely to themselves, they
would in a generation or two relapse into savages ; there were
but two alternatives before not Grenada only, but all the Eng-
glish West Indies — either an English administration pure
and simple like the East Indian, or a falling eventually into a
state like that of Hayti, where they eat the babies, and no
white man can own a yard of land.

It was dark night when we drove back to the port. The
houses along the road, which had looked so miserable on the
outside, were now lighted with paraffin lamps. I could see
into them, and was astonished to observe signs of comfort
and even signs of taste — arm-chairs, sofas, side-boards with
cut glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon
the walls. The old state of things is gone, but a new state
of things is rising which may have a worth of its own. The
plant of civilisation as yet has taken but feeble root, and is
only beginning to grow. It may thrive yet if those who have

Dramatic Art among the Negroes. 57

troubled all the earth will consent for another century to
take their industry elsewhere.

The ship's galley was waiting at the wharf when we reached
it. The cajDtain also had been dining with a friend on shore,
and we had to wait for him. The offshore night breeze had
not yet risen. The harbour was smooth as a looking glass,
and the stars shone double in the sky and on the water. The
silence was only broken by the whistle of the lizards or the
cry of some far-off marsh frog. The air was warmer than we
ever feel it in the depth of an English summer, yet pure and
delicious and charged with the perfume of a thousand flowers.
One felt it strange that with so beautiful a possession lying
at our doors, we should have allowed it to slide out of our
hands. I could say for myself, like Pere Labat, the island
was all that man could desire. ' En un mot, la vie y est deli-
cieuse.'

The anchor was got up immediately that we were on board.
In the morning we were to find ourselves at Port of Spain.

Mr. S , the Windward Island governor, who had joined

us at St. Vincent, was, as I said, going to Tobago. De Eoe
took the human part of his Robinson Crusoe from the story
of Juan Fernandez. The locality is supposed to have been
Tobago, and Trinidad the island from which the cannibal
savages came. We are continually shuffling the cards, in a
hope that a better game may be played with them. Tobago
is now annexed to Trinidad. Last year it was a part of Mr.
S — — 's dominions which he periodically visited. I fell in
with him again on his return, and he told us an incident which
befell him there, illustrating the uuexjoected shapes in which
the schoolmaster is appearing among the blacks. An intima-
tion was brought to him on his arrival that, as the Athenian
journeymen had played Pyramus and Thisbe at the nuptials
of Theseus and Hippolyta, a party of villagers from the in-
terior of Tobago would like to act before his Excellency. Of

58 The English in the West Indies.

course he consented. They came, and went through their

performance. To Mr. S 's, and probably to the reader's

astonishment, the play which they had selected was tlie
' Merchant of Venice.' Of the rest of it he perhaps thought,
like the queen of the Amazons, that it was ' sorry staff,' but
Shylock's representative, he said, showed real appreciation.
With freedom and a peasant proprietary, the money lender is
a necessary phenomenon, and the actor's imagination may
have been assisted by personal recollections.

CHAPTER Vt

Charles Kingsley at Trinidad — Lay of the Last Buccaneer — A French
forban — Adventure at Aves— Mass on board a pirate ship — Port
of Spain — A house in the tropics — A political meeting — Govern-
ment House — The Botanical Gardens — Kingsley's rooms — Sugar
estates and coolies.

I might spare myself a description of Trinidad, for the natu-
ral features of the place, its forests and its gardens, its ex-
cprisite flora, the loveliness of its birds and insects, have been
described already, with a grace of touch and a fullness of
knowledge which I could not rival if I tried, by my dear friend
Charles Kingsley. He was a naturalist by instinct, and the
West Indies and all belonging to them had been the passion
of his life. He had followed the logs and journals of the
Elizabethan adventurers till he had made their genius part of
himself. In Amyas Leigh, the hero of ' Westward Ho,' ho
produced a figure more completely representative of that ex-
traordinary set of men than any other novelist, except Sir
Walter, has ever done for an age remote from his own. He
followed them down into their latest developments, and sang
their swan song in his 'Lay of the Last Buccaneer.' So
characteristic is this poem of the transformation of the West
Indies of romance and adventure into the West Indies of
sugar and legitimate trade, that I steal it to ornament my
own prosaic pages.

60 The English in the West Indies.

THE LAY OF THE LAST BUCCANEER.

Oh ! England is a pleasant place for thein that's rich and high,

But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I ;

And such a port for mariners I'll never see again

As the pleasant Isle of Aves beside the Spanish main.

There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout,
All furnished well with small arms and cannon all about ;
And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free
To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.

Then we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold,
Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folks of old ;
Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,
Who flog men and keelhaul them and starve them to the bone.

Oh ! palms grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold,
And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold, '
And the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee
To welcome gallant sailors a sweeping in from sea.

Oh ! sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze

A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,

With a negro lass to fan you while you listened to the roar

Of the breakers on the reef outside which never touched the shore.

But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be,

So the king's ships sailed on Aves and quite put down were we.

All day we fought like bull dogs, but they burnt the booms at night,

And I fled in a piragua sore wounded from the fight.

Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside,

Till for all I tried to cheer her the poor young thing she died.

But as I lay a gasping a Bristol sail came by,

And brought me home to England here to beg until I die.

And now I'm old and going : I'm sure I can't tell where.
One comfort is, this world's so hard I can't be worse off there.
If I might but be a sea dove, I'd fly across the main
To the pleasant Isle of Aves to look at it once again.

By the side of this imaginative picture of a poor English
sea rover, let me place another, an authentic one, of a French
forban or pirate in the same seas. Kingsley's Aves, or Isle of

A French Pirate. 61

Birds, is down on the American coast. There is another is-
land of the same name, which was occasionally frequented by
the same gentry, about a hundred miles south of Dominica.
Pere Labat going once from Martinique to Guadaloupe had
taken a berth with Captain Daniel, one of the most noted of
the French corsairs of the day, for better security. People
were not scrupulous in those times, and Labat and Daniel
had been long good friends. They were caught in a gale off
Dominica, blown away, and carried to Aves, where they found
an English merchant ship lying a wreck. Two English ladies
from Barbadoes and a dozen other people had escaped on
shore. They had sent for help, and a large vessel came for
them the day after Daniel's arrival. Of course he made a
prize of it. Labat said prayers on board for him before the
engagement, and the vessel surrendered after the first shot.
The good humour of the party was not disturbed by this in-
cident. The pirates, their prisoners, and the ladies stayed
together for a fortnight at Aves, catching turtles and bou-
canning them, picnicking, and enjoying themselves. Daniel
treated the ladies with the utmost politeness, carried them
afterwards to St. Thomas's, dismissed them unransomed, sold
his prizes, and wound up the whole affair to the satisfaction
of every one. Labat relates all this with wonderful humour,
and tells, among other things, the following story of Daniel.
On some expedition, when he was not so fortunate as to
have a priest on board, he was in want of provisions. Being
an outlaw he could not furnish himself in an open port. One
night he put into the harbour of a small island, called Los
Santos, not far from Dominica, where ouly a few families re-
sided. He sent a boat on shore in the darkness, took the
priest and two or three of the chief inhabitants out of their
beds, and carried them on board, where he held them as
hostages, and then under pretence of compulsion requisitioned
the island to send him what he wanted. The priest and his

62 The English in the West Indies.

companions were treated meanwhile as guests of distinction.
No violence was necessary, for all parties understood one
another. While the stores were being collected, Daniel sug-
gested that there was a good opportunity for his crew to hear
mass. The priest of Los Santos agreed to say it for them.
The sacred vessels, &c, were sent for from the church on
shore. An awning was rigged over the forecastle, and an
altar set up under it. The men chanted the prayers. The
cannon answered the purpose of music. Broadsides were
fired at the first sentence, at the Exaudiat, at the Elevation, at
the Benediction, and a fifth at the prayer for the king. The
service was wound up by a Vive le Roi ! A single small ac-
cident only had disturbed the ceremony. One of the pirates,
at the Elevation, being of a profane mind, made an indecent
gesture. Daniel rebuked him, and, as the offence was re-
peated, drew a pistol and blew the man's brains out, saying
he would do the same to any one who was disrespectful to the
Holy Sacrament. The priest being a little startled, Daniel
begged him not to be alarmed ; he was only chastising a ras-
cal to teach him his duty. At any rate, as Labat observed,
he had effectually prevented the rascal from doing anything
of the same kind again. Mass being over, the body was
thrown overboard, and priest and congregation went their
several ways.

Kingsley's ' At Last ' gave Trinidad an additional interest
to me, but even he had not prepared me completely for the
place which I was to see. It is only when one has seen any
object with one's own eyes, that the accounts given by others
become recognisable and instructive.

Trinidad is the largest, after Jamaica, of the British West
Indian Islands, and the hottest absolutely after none of them.
It is square-shaped, and, I suppose, was once a part of South
America. The Orinoco river and the ocean currents between
them have cut a channel between it and the mainland, which

Port of Spain. 63

lias expanded into a vast shallow lake known as the Gulf of
Paria. The two entrances by which the gulf is approached
are narrow and are called bocas or mouths — one the Dragon's
Mouth, the other the Serpent's. When the Orinoco is in
flood, the water is brackish, and the brilliant violet blue of
the Caribbean Sea is changed to a dirty yellow ; but the
harbour which is so formed would hold all the commercial
uavies of the world, and seems formed by nature to be the
depot one day of an enormous trade.

Trinidad has had its period of romance. Columbus was
the first discoverer of it. Raleigh was there afterwards on
his expedition in search of his gold mine, and tarred his ves-
sels with pitch out of the famous lake. The island was alter-
nately Spanish and French till Picton took it in 1797, since
which time it has remained English. The Carib part of the
population has long vanished. The rest of it is a medley of
English, French, Spaniards, negroes, and coolies. The Eng-
glish, chiefly migratory, go there to make money and go home
with it. The old colonial families have few representatives
left, but the island prospers, trade increases, coolies increase,
cocoa and coffee plantations and indigo plantations increase.
Port of Spain, the capital, grows annually ; and even sugar
holds its own in spite of low prices, for there is money at the
back of it, and a set of people who, being speculative and
commercial, are better on a level with the times than the old-
fashioned planter aristocracy of the other islands. The soil
is of extreme fertility, about a fourth of it under cultivation,
the rest natural forest and unappropriated Crown land.

We passed the ' Dragon's Jaws ' before daylight. The sun
had just risen when we anchored off Port of Spain. We saw
before us the usual long line of green hills with mountains
behind them ; between the hills and the sea was a low, broad,
alluvial plain, deposited by an arm of the Orinoco and by
the other rivers which run into the <mlf. The cocoa-nut

64 The English in the West Indies.

palms thrive best on the water's edge. They stretched for
miles on either side of us as a fringe to the shore. Where
the water was shoal, there were vast swamps of mangrove,
the lower branches covered with oysters.

However depressed sugar might be, business could not be
stagnant. Ships of all nations lay round us taking in or dis-
charging cargo. I myself formed for the time being part of

the cargo of my friend and host Mr. G , who had brought

me to Trinidad, the accomplished son of a brilliant mother,
himself a distinguished lawyer and member of the executive
council of the island, a charming companion, an invaluable
public servant, but with the temperament of a man of genius,
half humorous, half melancholy, which does not find itself
entirely at home in West Indian surroundings.

On landing we found ourselves in a large foreign-looking
town, 'Port of Spain ' having been built by French and Span-
iards according to their national tendencies, and especially
with a view to the temperature, which is that of a forcing
house, and rarely falls below 80°. The streets are broad and
are planted with trees for shade, each house where room per-
mits having a garden of its own, with palms and mangoes
and coffee plants and creepers. Of sanitary arrangements
there seemed to be none. There is abundance of rain, and
the gutters which run down by the footway are flushed al-
most every day. But they are all open. Dirt of every kind
lies about freely, to be washed into them or left to putrefy
as fate shall direct. The smell would not be pleasant with-
out the help of that natural scavenger the Johnny crow, a
black vulture who roosts on the trees and feeds in the middle
of the streets. We passed a dozen of these unclean but use-
ful birds in a fashionable thoroughfare gobbling up chicken
entrails and refusing to be disturbed. When gorged they
perch in rows upon the roofs. On the ground they are the
nastiest to look at of all winged creatures ; yet on windy days

A House in the Tropics. 65

they presume to soar like their kindred, and when far up
might be taken for eagles.

The town has between thirty and forty thousand people
living in it, and the rain and Johnny crows between them
keep off pestilence. Outside is a large savannah or park,
where the villas are of the successful men of business. One
of these belonged to my host, a cool airy habitation with open
doors and windows, overhanging portico, and rooms into
which all the winds might enter, but not the sun. A garden
in front was shut off from the savannah by a fence of ba-
nanas. At the gate stood as sentinel a cabbage palm a hun-
dred feet high ; on the lawn mangoes, oranges, papaws, and
bread-fruit trees, strange to look at, but luxuriantly shady.
Before the door was a tree of good dimensions, whose name
I have forgotten, the stem and branches of which were hung

with orchids which G had collected in the woods. The

borders were blazing with varieties of the single hibiscus,
crimson, pink, and fawn colour, the largest that I had ever
seen. The average diameter of each single flower was from
seven to eight inches. Wind streamed freely through the
long sitting room, loaded with the perfume of orange trees ;
on table and in bookcase the hand and mind visible of a
gifted and cultivated man. The particular room assigned to
myself would have been equally delightful, but that my pos-
session of it was disputed even in daylight by mosquitoes,
who for bloodthirsty ferocity had a bad pre-eminence over
the worst that I had ever met with elsewhere. I killed one
who was at work upon me, and examined him through a
glass. Bewick, with the inspiration of genius, had drawn his
exact likeness as the devil — a long black stroke for a bod}', a
nick for a neck, horns on the head, and a beak for a mouth,
spindle arms, and longer spindle legs, two pointed wings, and
a tail. Line for line there the figure was before me which in
the unforgetable tailpiece is driving the thief under the gal-

GQ The English in the West Indies.

lows, and I had a melancholy satisfaction in identifying him.
I had been warned to be on the lookout for scorpions, centi-
pedes, jiggers, and land crabs, who wrould bite me if I
walked slipperless over the floor in the dark. Of these, I
met with none, either there or anywhere ; but the mosquito
of Trinidad is enough by himself. For malice, mockery,
and venom of tooth and trumpet, he is without a match in
the world.

From mosquitoes, however, one could seek safety in to-
bacco smoke, or hide behind the lace curtains with which
every bed is provided. Otherwise I found every provision
to make life pass deliciously. To walk is difficult in a damp
steamy temperature hotter during daylight than the hottest
forcing house in Kew. I was warned not to exert myself and
to take cocktail freely. In the evening I might venture out
with the bats and take a drive if I wished in the twilight.
Languidly charming as it all was, I could not help asking
myself of what use such a possession could be either to Eng-
land or to the English nation. We could not colonise it,
could not cultivate it, could not draw a revenue from it. If
it prospered commercially the prosperity would be of French
and Spaniards, mulattoes and blacks, but scarcely, if at all,
of my own countrymen. For here too, as elsewhere, they
were growing fewer daily, and those who remained were
looking forward to the day when they could be released.
If it were not for the honour of the thing, as the Irish-
man said after being carried in a sedan chair which had no
bottom, we might have spared ourselves so unnecessary a
conquest.

Beautiful, however, it was beyond dispute. Before sunset
a carriage took us round the savannah. Tropical human
beings like tropical birds are fond of fine colours, especially
black human beings, and the park was as brilliant as Ken-
sington Gardens on a Sundav. At nightfall the scene became

Politics in Trinidad. 67

yet more wonderful ; air, grass, and trees being alight with
fireflies each as brilliant as an English glowworm. The palm
tree at our own gate stood like a ghostly sentinel clear against
the starry sky, a single long dead frond hanging from below
the coronet of leaves and clashing against the stem as it was
blown to and fro by the night wind, while long-winged bats
swept and whistled over our heads.

The commonplace intrudes upon the imaginative. At mo-
ments one can fancy that the world is an enchanted place
after all, but then comes generally an absurd awakening. On
the first night of my arrival, before we went to bed there came
an invitation to me to attend a political meeting which was to
be held in a few days on the savannah. Trinidad is a purely
Crown colony, and has escaped hitherto the introduction of
the election virus. The newspapers and certain busy gentle-
men in ' Port of Spain ' had discovered that they were living
under 'a degrading tyranny,' and they demanded a ' consti-
tion.' They did not complain that their affairs had been ill-
managed. On the contrary, they insisted that they were the
most prosperous of the "West Indian colonies, and alone had
a surplus in their treasury. If this was so, it seemed to me
that they had better let well alone. The population, all told,
was but 170,000, less by thirty thousand than that of Barba-
does. They were a mixed and motley assemblage of all races
and colours, busy each with their own affairs, and never hith-
erto troubling themselves about politics. But it had pleased
the Home Government to set up the beginning of a constitu-
tion again in Jamaica, no one knew why, but so it was, and
Trinidad did not choose to be behindhand. The official ap-
pointments were valuable, and had been hitherto given away
by the Crown. The local popularities very naturally wished
to have them for themselves. This was the reality in the
thing so far as there was a reality. It Avas dressed up in the
phrases borrowed from the great English masters of the art,

68 The English in the West Indies.

about privileges of manhood, moral dignity, the elevating in-
fluence of the suffrage, &c, intended for home consumption
among the believers in the orthodox Radical faith.

For myself I could but reply to the gentlemen who had
sent the invitation, that I was greatly obliged by the compli-
ment, but that I knew too little of their affairs to make my
presence of any value to them. As they were doing so well,
I did not see myself why they wanted an alteration. Politi-
cal changes were generally little more than turns of a kaleido-
scope ; you got a new pattern but it was made of the same
pieces, and things went on much as before. If they wanted
political liberty I did not doubt that they would get it if they
were loud and persistent enough. Only they must under-
stand that at home Ave were now a democracy. Any consti-
tution which was granted them would be on the widest basis.
The blacks and coolies outnumbered the Europeans by four
to one, and perhaps when they had what they asked for they
might be less pleased than they expected.

You rise early in the tropics. The first two hours of day-
light are the best of the day. My friend drove me round the
town in his buggy the next morning. My second duty was
to pay my respects to the Governor, Sir William Robinson,
who had kindly offered me hospitality, and for which I must
present myself to thank him. In Sir William I found one of
those happy men whose constitution is superior to climate,
who can do a long day's work in his office, play cricket or
lawn tennis in the afternoon, and entertain his miscellaneous
subjects in the evening with sumptuous hospitality — a vigor-
orous, effective, perhaps ambitious gentleman, with a clear eye
to the views of his employers at home on whom his promo-
tion depends— certain to make himself agreeable to them,
likely to leave his mark to useful purpose on the colonies over
which he presides or may preside hereafter. Here in Trini-
dad he was learning Spanish in addition to his other Unguis-

Government House and Gardens. 69

tic accomplishments, that he might show proper courtesies
to Spanish residents and to visitors from South America.

The ' Eesidence ' stands in a fine situation, in large grounds
of its own at the foot of the mountains. It has been lately
built regardless of expense, for the colony is rich, and likes
to do things handsomely. On the lawn, under the windows,
stood a tree which was entirely new to me, an enormous ceiba
or silk cotton tree, umbrella shaped, fifty yards in diameter,
the huge and buttressed trunk throwing out branches so mas-
sive that one wondered how any woody fibre could bear the
strain of their weight, the boughs twisting in and out till
they made a roof over one's head, which was hung with
every fantastic variety of parasites.

Vast as the ceibas were which I saw afterwards in other
parts of the West Indies, this was the largest. The ceiba is
the sacred tree of the negro, the temple of Jumbi the proper
home of Obeah. To cut one down is impious. No black in
his right mind would wound even the bark. A Jamaica po-
lice officer told me that if a ceiba had to be removed, the
men who used the axe were well dosed with rum to give them
courage to defy the devil.

From Government House we strolled into the adjoining-
Botanical Gardens. I had long heard of the wonders of
these. The reality went beyond description. Plants with
which I was familiar as shrubs in English conservatories were
here expanded into forest giants, with hundreds of others of
which we cannot raise even Lilliputian imitations. Let man
be what he will, nature in the tropics is always grand.
Palms were growing in the greatest luxuriance, of every
known species, from the cabbage towering up into the sky
to the fan palm of the desert whose fronds are reservoirs of
water. Of exogenous trees, the majority were leguminous
in some shape or other, forming flowers like a pea or vetch
and hanging their seed in pods ; yet in shape and foliage

70 The English in the West Indies.

they distanced far the most splendid ornaments of an English
park. They had Old World names with characters wholly
different : cedars which were not conifers, almonds which
were no relations to peaches, and gum trees as unlike euca-
lypti as one tree can be unlike another. Again, you saw
forms which you seemed to recognise till some unexpected
anomaly startled you out of your mistake. A gigantic Portu-
gal laurel, or what I took for such, was throwing out a flower
direct from the stem like a cactus. Grandest among them
all, and happily in full bloom, was the sacred tree of Bur-
mah, the Amherstia nobilis, at a distance like a splendid horse-
chestnut, with crimson blossoms in pendant bunches, each
separate flower in the convolution of its parts exactly coun-
terfeiting a large orchid, with which it has not the faintest
affinity, the Amherstia being leguminous like the rest.

Underneath, and dispersed among the imperial beauties,
were spice trees, orange trees, coffee plants and cocoa, or
again, shrubs with special virtues or vices. We had to be
careful what we were about, for fruits of fairest appearance
were tempting us all round. My companion was preparing
to eat something to encourage me to do the same. A gar-
dener stopped him in time. It was nux vomica. I was stray-
ing along a less frequented path, conscious of a heavy vapor-
ous odour, in which I might have fainted had I remained ex-
posed to it. I was close to a manchineel tree.

Prettiest and freshest were the nutmegs, which had a glen
all to themselves and perfumed the surrounding air. In
Trinidad and in Grenada I believe the nutmegs are the lar-
gest that are known, being from thirty to forty feet high ;
leaves brilliant green, something like the leaves of an orange,
but extremely delicate and thin, folded one over the other,
the lowest branches sweeping to the ground till the whole
tree forms a natural bower, which is proof against a tropical
shower. The fragrance attracts moths and flies ; not mos-

A Remarkable Vine. 71

quitoes, who prefer a ranker atmosphere. I saw a pair of
butterflies the match of which I do not remember even in
any museum, dark blue shot with green like a peacock's
neck, and the size of English bats. I asked a black boy to
catch me one. ' That sort no let catchee, massa,' he said ;
and I was penitently glad to hear it.

Among the Avonders of the gardens are the vines as they
call them, that is, the creepers of various kinds that climb
about the other trees. Standing in an open space there was
what once had been a mighty ' cedar.' It was now dead, only
the trunk and dead branches remaining, and had been mur-
dered by a ' fig ' vine which had started from the root, twined
itself like a python round the stem, strangled out the natural
life, and spreading out in all directions had covered boughs
and twigs with a foliage not its own. So far the ' vine ' had
done no worse than ivy does at home, but there was one feat-
ure about it which puzzled me altogether. The lowest of the
original branches of the cedar were about twenty feet above
our heads. From these in four or five places the parasite had
let fall shoots, perhaps an inch in diameter, which descended
to within a foot of the grouucl and then suddenly, without
touching that or anything, formed a bight like a rope, went
straight up again, caught hold of the branch from which they
started, and so hung suspended exactly as an ordinary swing.
In three distinctly perfect instances the ' vine ' had executed
this singular evolution, while at the extremity of one of the
longest and tallest branches high up in the air it had made a
clean leap of fifteen feet without visible help and had caught
hold of another tree adjoining on the same level. These per-
formances were so inexplicable that I conceived that they
must have been a freak of the gardener's. I was mistaken.
He said that at particular times in the year the fig vine threw
out fine tendrils which hung downwards like strings. The
strongest among them would lay hold of two or three others

72 The English in the West Indies.

and climb up upon them, the rest would die and drop off,
while the successful one, having found support for itself
above, would remain swinging in the air and thicken and
prosper. The leap he explained by the wind. I retained a
suspicion that the wind had been assisted by some aspiring
energy in the plant itself, so bold it was and so ambitious.

But the wonders of the garden were thrown into the shade
by the cottage at the extreme angle of it (the old Government-
House before the present fabric had been erected), where
Kingsley had been the guest of Sir Arthur Gordon. It is a
long straggling wooden building with deep verandahs lying-
in a hollow overshadowed by trees, with views opening out
into the savannah through arches formed by clumps of tall
bamboos, the canes growing thick in circular masses and
shooting up a hundred feet into the air, where they meet and
form frames for the landscape, peculiar and even picturesque
when there are not too many of them. These bamboos were
Kingsley's special delight, as he had never seen the like of
them elsewhere. The room in which he wrote is still shown,
and the gallery where he walked up and down with his long-
pipe. His memory is cherished in the island as of some sin-
gular and beautiful presence which still hovers about the
scenes which so delighted him in the closing evening of his
own life.

It was the dry season, midwinter, yet raining every day for
two or three hours, and when it rains in these countries it
means business. When the sky cleared the sun was intoler-
ably hot, and distant expeditions under such conditions suited
neither my age nor my health. With cocktail I might have
ventured, but to cocktail I could never heartily reconcile my-
self. Trinidad has one wonder in it, a lake of bitumen some
ninety acres in extent, which all travellers are expected to
visit, and which few residents care to visit. A black lake is
not so beautiful as an ordinary lake. I had no doubt that it

Negroes and Coolies. 73

existed, for the testimony was unimpeachable. Indeed I was
shown an actual specimen of the crystallized pitch itself. I
could believe without seeing and without undertaking a tedi-
ous journey. I rather sympathised with a noble lord who
came to Port of Sjjain in his yacht, and like myself had the
lake impressed upon him. As a middle course between go-
ing thither and appearing to slight his friends' recommenda-
tions, he said that he would send his steward.

In Trinidad, as everywhere else, my own chief desire was
to see the human inhabitants, to learn what they were doing,
how they were living, and what they were thinking about,
and this could best be done by drives about the town and
neighbourhood. The cultivated land is a mere fringe round
the edges of the forest. Three-fourths of the soil are un-
touched. The rivers running out of the mountains have
carved out the usual long deep valleys, and spread the bot-
toms with rich alluvial soil. Here among the wooded slopes
are the country houses of the merchants. Here are the
cabins of the black peasantry with their cocoa and coffee and
orange plantations, which as in Grenada they hold largely as
freeholds, reproducing as near as possible the life in Paradise
of our first parents, without the consciousness of a want which
they are unable to gratify, not compelled to work, for the
earth of her own self bears for them all that they need, and
ignorant that there is any difference between moral good
and evil.

Large sugar estates, of course, there still are, and as the
owners have not succeeded in bringing the negroes to work
regularly for them,' they have introduced a few thousand
coolies under indentures for five years. These Asiatic im-
portations are very happy in Trinidad ; they save money, and

1 The negroes in the interior are beginning to cultivate sugar cane in
small patches, with common mills to break it up. If the experiment suc-
ceeds it may extend.

74 The English in the West Indies.

many of them do not return home when their time is out, but
stay where they are, buy land, or go into trade. They are
proud, however, and will not intermarry with the Africans.
Few bring their families with them ; and women being scanty
among them, there arise inconveniences and sometimes se-
rious crimes.

It were to be wished that there was more prospect of the
race becoming permanent than I fear there is. They work
excellently. They are picturesque additions to the landscape,
as they keep to the bright colours and graceful drapery of
India. The grave dignity of their faces contrasts remarkably
with the broad, good-humoured, but common features of the
African. The black women look with envy at the straight
hair of Asia, and twist their unhappy wool into knots and
ropes in the vain hoj)e of being mistaken for the purer race ;
but this is all. The African and the Asiatic will not mix,
and the African being the stronger will and must prevail in
Trinidad as elsewhere in the West Indies. Out of a total
population of 170,000, there are 25,000 whites and mulattoes,
10,000 coolies, the rest negroes. The English part of the
Europeans shows no tendency to increase. The English
come as birds of passage, and depart when they have made
their fortunes. The French and Spaniards may hold on to
Trinidad as a home. Our people do not make homes there.,
and must be looked on as a transient element.

CHAPTER VH.

A coolie village — Negro freeholds— Waterworks — Pythons— Slavery —
Evidence of Lord Rodney — Future of the negroes — Necessity of
English rale — The Blue Basin— Black boy and crayfish.

The second morning after my arrival, my host took me to a
coolie village three miles beyond the town. The drive was
between spreading cane fields, beneath the shade of bamboos,
or under rows of cocoa-nut palms, between the steins of which
the sun was gleaming.

Human dwelling-places are rarely interesting in the tropics.
A roof which will keep the rain out is all that is needed. The
more free the passage given to the air under the floor and
through the side, the more healthy the habitation ; and the
houses, when we came among them, seemed merely enlarged
packing cases loosely nailed together and raised on stones a
foot or two from the ground. The rest of the scene was pic-
turesque enough. The Indian jewellers were sitting cross-
legged before their charcoal pans, making silver bracelets and
earrings. Brilliant garments, crimson and blue and orange,
were hanging to dry on clothes lines. Men were going out
to their work, women cooking, children (not many) playing
or munching sugar cane, while great mango trees and ceibas
spread a cool green roof over all. Like Rachel, the coolies
had brought their gods to their new home. In the centre of
the village was a Hindoo temple, made up rudely o\it of
boards with a verandah running round it. The doors were
locked. An old man who had charge told us we could not
enter ; a crowd, suspicious and sullen, gathered about us a3

76 The English in the West Indies.

we tried to prevail upon Lira. So we had to content our-
selves with the outside, which was gaudily and not unskilfully
painted in Indian fashion. There were gods and goddesses
in various attitudes ; Vishnu fighting with the monkey god,
Vishnu with cutlass and shield, the monkey with his tail
round one tree while he brandished two others, one in each
hand, as clubs. I suppose that we smiled, for our curiosity
was resented, and we found it prudent to withdraw.

The coolies are useful creatures. Without them sugar
cultivation in Trinidad and Demerara would cease altogether.
They are useful and they are singularly ornamental. Unfor-
tunately they have not the best character with the police.
There is little crime among the negroes, who quarrel furi-
ously but with their tongues only. The coolies have the
fiercer passions of their Eastern blood. Their women being
few are tempted occasionally into infidelities, and would be
tempted more often but that a lapse in virtue is so fearfully
avenged. A coolie regards his wife as his property, and if
she is unfaithful to him he kills her without the least hesita-
tion. One of the judges told me that he had tried a case of
this kind, and could not make the man understand that he
had done anything wrong. It is a pity that a closer inter-
mixture between them and the negroes seems so hopeless,
for it would solve many difficulties. There is no jealousy.
The negro does not regard the coolie as a competitor and in-
terloper who has come to lower his wages. The coolie comes
to work. The negro does not want to work, and both are
satisfied. But if there is no jealousy there is no friendship.
The two races are more absolutely apart than the white and
the black. The Asiatic insists the more on his superiority in
the fear perhaps that if he did not the white might forget it.

Among the sights in the neighbourhood of Port of Spain
are the waterworks, extensive basins and reservoirs a few
miles off in the hills. We chose a cool afternoon, when the

Negro Freeholds. 77

temperature in the shade was not above 86°, and went to
look at them. It was my first sight of the interior of the
island, and my first distinct acquaintance with the change
which had come over the West Indies. Trinidad is not one
of our oldest possessions, but we had held it long enough for
the old planter civilisation to take root and grow, and our
road led us through jungles of flowering shrubs which were
running wild over what had been once cultivated estates.
Stranger still (for one associates colonial life instinctively
with what is new and modern), we came at one place on an
avenue of vast trees, at the end of which stood the ruins of
a mansion of some gi*eat man of the departed order. Great
man he must have been, for there was a gateway half
crumbled away on which were his crest and shield in stone,
with supporters on either side, like the Baron of Bradwar-
dine's Bears ; fallen now like them, but unlike them never,
I fear, to be set up again. The Anglo- West Indians, like the
English gentry in Ireland, were a fine race of men in their
day, and perhaps the improving them off the earth has been
a less beneficial process in either case than we are in the
habit of supposing.

Entering among the hills we came on their successors. In
Trinidad there are 18,000 freeholders, most of them negroes
and representatives of the old slaves. Their cabins are
spread along the road on either side, overhung with bread-
fruit trees, tamarinds, calabash treeSi out of which they make
their cups and water jugs ; the luscious granadilla climbs
among the branches ; plantains throw their cool shade over
the doors ; oranges and limes and citrons perfume the air,
and droop their boughs under the weight of their golden
burdens. There were yams in the gardens and cows in the
paddocks, and cocoa bushes loaded with purple or yellow
pods. Children played about in swarms, in happy idleness
and abundance, with schools, too, at intervals, and an occa-

78 The English in the West Indies.

sional Catholic chapel, for the old religion prevails in Trini-
dad, never having been disturbed. What form could human
life assume more charming than that which we were now
looking on? Once more, the earth does not contain any
peasantry so well off, so well cared for, so happy, so sleek
and contented as the sons and daughters of the emancipated
slaves in the English West Indian Islands. Sugar may fail
the planter, but cocoa, which each peasant can grow with
small effort for himself, does not fail and will not. He may
' better his condition,' if he has any such ambition, without
stirring beyond his own ground, and so far, perhaps, his am-
bition may extend, if it is not turned off upon politics.
Even the necessary evils of the tropics are not many or seri-
ous. His skin is proof against mosquitoes. There are snakes
in Trinidad as there were snakes in Eden. ' Plenty snakes,'
said one of them who was at work in his garden, ' plenty
snakes, but no bitee.' As to costume, he would prefer the
costume of innocence if he was allowed. Clothes in such a
climate are superfluous for warmth, and to the minds of
the negroes, unconscious as they are of shame, superfluous
for decency. European prejudice, however, still passes for
something ; the women have a love for finery, which would
prevent a complete return to African simplicity ; and in the
islands which are still French, and in those like Trinidad,
which the French originally colonised, they dress themselves
with real taste. They hide their wool in red or yellow hand-
kerchiefs, gracefully twisted ; or perhaps it is not only to
conceal the wool. Columbus found the Carib women of the
island dressing their hair in the same fashion.1

The waterworks, when we reached them, were even more
beautiful than we had been taught to expect. A dam has
been driven across a perfectly limpid mountain stream ; a

1 Traen las cabezas atadas con unos panuelos labrados hermosos que
parecen de lejos d« seda y almazarrones.

The Waterworks of Port of Spain. 79

wide open area has been cleared, levelled, strengthened with
masonry, and divided into deep basins or reservoirs, through
which the current continually flows. Hedges of hibiscus
shine with crimson blossoms. Innumerable humming birds
glance to and fro among the trees and shrubs, and gardens
and ponds are overhung by magnificent bamboos, which so
astonished me by their size that I inquired if their height
had been measured. One of them, I was told, had lately
fallen, and was found to be 130 feet long. A single draw-
back only there was to this enchanting spot, and it was again
the snakes. There are huge pythons in Trinidad which are
supposed to have crossed the straits from the continent.
The cool water pools attract them, and they are seen occa-
sionally coiled among the branches of the bamboos. Some
washerwomen at work in the stream had been disturbed a
few days before our visit by one of these monsters, who had
come down to see what they were about. They are harm-
less, but trying to the nerves. One of the men about the
place shot this one, and he told me that he had shot another
a short time before asleep in a tree. The keeper of the
works was a retired soldier, an Irish-Scot from Limerick,
hale, vigorous, and happy as the blacks themselves. He had
married one of them — a remarkable exception to an almost
universal rule. He did not introduce us, but the dark lady
passed by us in gorgeous costume, just noticing our presence
with a sweep which would have done credit to a duchess.

We made several similar small expeditions into the settled
parts of the neighbourhood, seeing always (whatever else we
saw) the boundless happiness of the black race. Under the
rule of England in these islands the two million of these poor
brothers-in-law of ours are the most perfectly contented
specimens of the human race to be found upon the planet.
Even Schopenhauer, could he have known them, would have
admitted that there were some of us who were not hopelessly

80 The English in the West Indies.

wretched. If happiness be the satisfaction of every conscious
desire, theirs is a condition which admits of no improve-
ment : were they independent, they might quarrel among
themselves, and the weaker become the bondmen of the
stronger ; under the beneficent despotism of the English
Government, which knows no difference of colour and permits
no oppression, they can sleep, lounge, and laugh away their
lives as they please, fearing no danger. If they want money,
work and wages are waiting for them. No one can say what
may be before them hereafter. The powers which envy hu-
man beings too perfect felicity may find ways one day of dis-
turbing the West Indian negro ; but so long as the English
rule continues, he may be assured of the same tranquil exist-
ence.

As life goes he has been a lucky mortal. He was taken
away from Dahomey and Ashantee — to be a slave indeed, but
a slave to a less cruel master than he would have found at
home. He had a bad time of it occasionally, and the planta-
tion whip and the branding irons are not all dreams, yet his
owner cared for him at least as much as he cared for his
cows and his horses. Kind usage to animals is more econ-
omical than barbarity, and Englishmen in the West Indies
were rarely inhuman. Lord Rodney says : ' I have been
often in all the West India Islands, and I have often made my
observations on the treatment of the negro slaves, and can
aver that I never knew the least cruelty inflicted on them, but
that in general they lived better than the honest day-labouring
man in England, without doing a fourth part of his work in
a day, and I am fully convinced that the negroes in our isl-
ands are better provided for and live better than when in
Guinea.' Rodney, it is true, was a man of facts and was
defective in sentiment. Let us suppose him wrong, let us
believe the worst horrors of the slave trade or slave usage as
fluent tongue of missionary or demagogue has described

English Rule and the Negroes. 81

them, yet nevertheless, when we consider what the lot of
common humanity has been and is, we shall be dishonest if
we deny that the balance has been more than redressed ;
and the negroes who were taken away out of Africa, as
compared with those who were left at home, were as the
'elect to salvation,' who after a brief purgatory are secured
an eternity of blessedness. The one condition is the main-
tenance of' the authority of the English crown. The whites
of the islands cannot equitably rule them. They have not
shaken off the old traditions. If, for the sake of theory
or to shirk responsibility, we force them to govern them-
selves, the state of Hayti stands as a ghastly example of the
condition into which they will then inevitably fall. If we
persist, we shall be sinning against light — the clearest light
that was ever given in such affairs. The most hardened be-
liever in the regenerating effects of political liberty cannot
be completely blind to the ruin which the infliction of it
would necessarily bring upon the race for whose interests
they pretend particularly to care.

The Pitch Lake I resisted all exhortations to visit, but the
clays in the forest were delightful — pre-eminently a day
which we spent at the ' Blue Basin,' a pool scooped out in the
course of ages by a river falling through a mountain gorge ;
blue, not from any colour in the water, which is purely trans-
parent, but from a peculiar effect of sky reflection through
an opening in the overhanging trees. As it was far off, we
had to start early and encounter the noonday heat. "We had
to close the curtains of the carriage to escape the sun, and in
losing the sun we shut out the wind. All was well, however,
when we turned into the hills. Thenceforward the road fol-
lowed the bottom of a densely wooded ravine ; impenetrable
foliage spreading over our heads, and a limpid river flashing
along in which our horses cooled their feet and lips as we
crossed it again and again. There were the usual cabins and
G

82 The English in the West Indies.

gardens on either side of us, sometimes single, sometimes
clustering into villages, and high above them the rocks stood
out, broken into precipices or jutting out into projecting
crags, with huge trees starting from the crevices, dead trunks
with branching arms clothed scantily with creepers, or liv-
ing giants with blue or orange-coloured flowers. Mangoes
scented the valley with their blossom. Bananas waved their
long broad leaves — some flat and unbroken as we know them
in conservatories, some split into palm-like fronds which
quivered in the breeze. The cocoa pods were ripe or ripen-
ing, those which had been gathered being left on the ground
in heaps as we see apples in autumn in an English orchard.

We passed a lady on the way who was making sketches and
daring the mosquitoes, that were feeding at leisure upon her
face and arms. The road failed us at last. We alighted
with our waterproof s and luncheon basket. A couple of half-
naked boys sprang forward to act as guides and porters — ■
nice little fellows, speaking a French patois for their natural
language, but with English enough to eai*n shillings and
amuse the British tourist. With their help we scrambled
along a steep slippery path, the river roaring below, till we
came to a spot where, the rock being soft, a waterfall had
cut out in the course of ages a natural hollow, of which the
trees formed the roof, and of which the floor was the pool we
had come in search of. The fall itself was perpendicular, and
fifty or sixty feet high, the water issuing at the top out of
a dark green tunnel among overhanging branches. The sides
of the basin were draped with the fronds of gigantic ferns
and wild plantains, all in wild luxuriance and dripping with
the spray. In clefts above the rocks, large cedars or gum
trees had struck their roots and flung out their smarled and
twisted branches, which were hung with fern ; while at the
lower end of the pool, where the river left it again, there
grew out from among the rocks near the water's edge tall

BLUE BASIN, TRINIDAD.

The Blue Basin. S3

and exquisitely grouped acacias with, crimson flowers for
leaves.

The place broke on us suddenly as we scrambled round
a corner from below. Three young blacks were bathing in
the pool, and as we had a lady with us, they were induced,
though sullenly and with some difficulty, to return into their
scanty garments and depart. Never certainly was there a
more inviting spot to swim in, the more so from exciting
possibilities of adventure. An English gentleman went to
bathe there shortly before our coming. He was on a rock,
swaying his body for a plunge, when something caught his
eye among the shadows at the bottom. It proved to be a
large dead python.

"We had not the luck ourselves of falling in with so inter-
esting a beast. Great butterflies and perhaps a humming
bird or two were flitting among the leaves as we came up ;
other signs of life there were none, unless we call life the mo-
tion of the plantain leaves, waving in the draughts of air
which were eddying round the waterfall. We sat down on
stones, or on the trunk of a fallen tree, the mosquitoes merci-
fully sparing us. We sketched a little, talked a little, ate our
sandwiches, and the male part of us lighted our cigars. G

then, to my surprise, produced a fly rod. In the streams

in the Antilles, which run out of the mountains, there is a fish
in great abundance which they call mullet, an inferior trout,
but a good substitute where the real thiug is not. He runs
sometimes to five pounds weight, will take the fly, and is much
sought after by those who try to preserve in the tropics the

amusements and habits of home. G had caught many

of them in Dominica. If in Dominica, why not in Trini-
dad ?

He put his tackle together, tied up a cast of trout flies,
and commenced work. He tried the still water at the lower
end of the basin. He crept round the rock and dropped his

Si The English in the West Indies.

line into the foam at the foot of the fall. No mullet rose,
nor fish of any kind. One of our small boys had looked on
with evident impatience. He cried out at last, ' No mullet,
but plenty crayfish,' pointing down into the water ; and there,
following the direction of his finger, we beheld strange grey
creatures, like cuttle-fish moving about on the points of their
toes, the size of small lobsters. The flies were dismounted,
a bare hook was fitted on a fine gut trace, with a split shot
or two to sink the line, all trim and excellent. A fresh-
water shrimp was caught under a stone for a bait. G

went to work, and the strange things took hold and let them-
selves be lifted halfway to the surface. But then, somehow,
they let go and disappeared.

Our small boy said nothing ; but I saw a scornful smile
upon his lips. He picked up a thin dry cane, found some
twine in the luncheon basket which had tied up our sand-
wiches, found a pin there also, and bent it, and put a shrimp
on it. With a pebble stone for a sinker he started in compe-
tition, and in a minute he had brought out upon the rock
the strangest thing in the shape of a fish which I had ever
seen in fresh water or salt. It was a true ' crayfish, ecrevisse,
eight inches long, formed regularly with the thick powerful
tail, the sharp serrated suout, the long antennae, and the
spider-like legs of the lobster tribe. As in a crayfish, the
claws were represented by the correctly shaped but diminu-
tive substitutes.

When we had done wondering at the prize, We could ad-
mire the smile of conscious superiority in the face of the
captor. The fine tackle had been beaten, as usual, by the
proverbial string and crooked pin, backed by knowledge in
the head of a small nigger boy.

CHAPTER VIII.

Home Rule in Trinidad — Political aspirations— Nature of the problem —
Crown administration — Colonial governors— A Russian apologue —
Dinner at Government House— 'The Three Fishers' — Charles War-
ner— Alternative futures of the colony.

The political demonstration to which I had been invited came
off the next day on the savannah. The scene was pretty
enough. Black coats and white trousers, bright-coloured
dresses and pink parasols, look the same at a distance whether
the wearer has a black face or a white one, and the broad
meadow was covered over with sparkling groups. Several
thousand persons must have attended, not all to hear the ora-
tory, for the occasion had been taken when the Governor was
to play close by in a cricket match, and half the crowd had
probably collected to see His Excellency at the wicket.
Placards had been posted about the town, setting out the
purpose of the meeting. Trinidad, as I said, is at present a
Crown colony, the executive council and the legislature being
equally nominated by the authorities. The popular orators,
the newspaper writers, and some of the leading merchants
in Port of Spain had discovered, as I said, that they were
living under what they called ' a degrading tyranny' They
had no grievances, or none that they alleged, beyond the
general one that they had no control over the finance. They
very naturally desired that the lucrative Government appoint-
ments for which the colony paid should be distributed among
themselves. The elective principle had been reintroduced in
Jamaica, evidently as a step towards the restoration of the

80 The English in the West Indies.

full constitution which had been surrendered and suppressed
after the Gordon riots. Trinidad was almost as large as
Jamaica, in proportion to the population wealthier and more
prosperous, and the people were invited to come together in
overwhelming numbers to insist that the ' tyranny ' should
end. The Home Government in their action about Jamaica
had shown a spontaneous readiness to transfer responsibility
from themselves to the inhabitants. The promoters of the
meeting at Port of Spain may have thought that a little press-
ure on their j:>art might not be unwelcome as an excuse for
further concessions of the same kind. Whether this was so
I do not know. At any rate they showed that they were as
yet novices in the art of agitation. The language of the
placard of invitation was so violent that, in the opinion of the
legal authorities, the printer might have been indicted for
high treason. The speakers did their best to imitate the fine
phrases of the apostles of liberty in Europe, but they suc-
ceeded only in caricaturing their absurdities. The proceed-
ings were described at length in the rival newspapers. One
gentleman's speech was said to have been so brilliant that
every sentence was a ' gem of oratory,' the gem of gems being
when he told his hearers that, ' if they went into the thing
at all, they should go the entire animal.' All went off good-
humouredly. In the Liberal journal the event of the day was
spoken of as the most magnificent demonstration in favour
of human freedom which had ever been seen in the West
Indian Islands. In the Conservative journal it was called a
ridiculous fiasco, and the people were said to have come to-
gether only to admire the Governor's batting, and to laugh
at the nonsense which was coming from the platform. Fi-
nally, the same journal assured us that, beyond a handful of
people who were interested in getting hold of the anticipated
spoils of office, no one in the island cared about the matter.
The result, I believe, was some petition or other which

Colonial Self- Government. 87

would go home and pass as evidence, to minds eager to be-
lieve, that Trinidad was rapidly ripening for responsible
government, promising relief to an overburdened Secretary
for the Colonies, who has more to do than he can attend to,
and is pleased with opportunities of gratifying popular senti-
ment, or of showing off in Parliament the development of
colonial institutions. He knows nothing, ,can know nothing,
of the special conditions of our hundred dependencies. He
accepts what his representatives in the several colonies choose
to tell him ; and his representatives, being birds of passage
responsible only to their employers at home, and depending
for their promotion on making themselves agreeable, are un-
der irresistible temptations to report what it will please the
Secretary of State to hear.

For the Secretary of State, too, is a bird of passage as they
are, passing through the Colonial Office on his way to other
departments, or holding the seals as part of an administration
whose tenure of office grows every year more precarious,
which exists only upon popular sentiment, and cannot, and
does not, try to look forward beyond at furthest the next
session of Parliament.

But why, it may be asked, should not Trinidad govern
itself as well as Tasmania or New Zealand ? Why not
Jamaica, why not all the West Indian Islands? I will answer
by another question. Do we wish these islands to remain
as part of the British Empire ? Are they of any use to us,
or have we responsibilities connected with them of which we
are not entitled to divest ourselves ? A government elected
by the majority of the people (and no one would think of
setting up constitutions on any other basis) reflects from tho
nature of things the character of the electors. All theso
islands tend to become partitioned into black peasant pro-
prietaries. In Grenada the process is almost complete. In
Trinidad it is rapidly advancing. No one can stop it. No

8S The English in the West Indies.

one ought to wish to stop it. But the ownership of freeholds
is one thing, and political power is another. The blacks de-
pend for the progress which they may be capable of making
on the presence of a white community among them ; and al-
though it is undesirable or impossible for the blacks to be
ruled by the minority of the white residents, it is equally un-
desirable and equally impossible that the whites should be
ruled by them. The relative numbers of the two races being
what they are, responsible government in Trinidad means
government by a black parliament and a black ministry. The
negro voters might elect, to begin with, their half-caste attor-
neys or such whites (the most disreputable of their colour) as
would court their suffrages. But the black does not love the
mulatto, and despises the white man who consents to be his
servant. He has no grievances. He is not naturally a poli-
tician, and if left alone with his own patch of land, will never
trouble himself to look further. But he knows what has
happened in St. Domingo. He has heard that his race is al-
ready in full possession of the finest of all the islands. If he
has any thought or any hopes about the matter, it is that it
may be with the rest of them as it has been with St. Domingo,
and if you force the power into his hands, you must expect
him to use it. Under the constitution which you would set
up, whites and blacks may be nominally equal ; but from the
enormous preponderance of numbers the equality would be
only in name, and such English people, at least, as would be
really of any value, would refuse to remain in a false and in-
tolerable position. Already the English population of Trini-
dad is dwindling away under the uncertainties of their future
position. Complete the work, set up a constitution with a
black prime minister and a black legislature, and they will
withdraw of themselves before they are compelled to go.
Spaniards and French might be tempted by advantages of
trade to remain in Port of Spain, as a few are still to be found

Colonial Self- Government 89

in Hayti. The}7, it is possible, might in time recover and re-
assert their supremacy. Englishmen have the world open to
them, and will prefer lands where they can live under less
degrading conditions. In Hayti the black republic allows no
white man to hold land in freehold. The blacks elsewhere
with the same opportunities will develop the same aspira-
tions.

Do we, or do we not, intend to retain our "West Indian
Islands under the sovereignty of the Queen ? If we are will-
ing to let them go, the question is settled. But we ought to
face the alternative. There is but one form of government
under which we can retain these colonies with honour and
security to ourselves and with advantage to the negroes
whom we have placed there — the mode of government which
succeeds with us so admirably that it is the world's wonder
in the East Indies, a success so unique and so extraordinary
that it seems the last from which we are willing to take ex-
ample.

In Natal, where the circumstances are analogous, and
where report says that efforts are being also made to force
on constitutional independence, I remember suggesting a
few years ago that the governor should be allowed to form
his own council, and that in selecting the members of it he
should go round the colony, observe the farms where the
land was well inclosed, the fields clean, the farm buildings
substantial and in good repair ; that he should call on the
owners of these to be his advisers and assistants. In all
Natal he might find a dozen such. They would be unwilling
to leave their own business for so thankless a purpose ; but
they might be induced by good feeling to grant him a few
weeks of their time. Under such an administration I imagine
Natal would have a happier future before it than it will ex-
perience with the boon which is designed for it.

In the West Indies there is indefinite wealth waiting: to bo

90 The English in the West Indies.

developed by intelligence and capital ; and men with such
resources, both English and American, might be tempted still
to settle there, and lead the blacks along with them into more
settled manners and higher forms of civilisation. But the
future of the blacks, and our own influence over them for
good, depend on their being protected from themselves and
from the schemers who would take advantage of them. How-
ever little may be the share to which the mass of a population
be admitted in the government of their country, they are
never found hard to manage where they prosper and are
justly dealt with. The children of darkness are even easier
of control than the children of light. Under an administra-
tion formed on the model of that of our Eastern Empire
these islands would be peopled in a generation or two with
dusky citizens, as proud as the rest of us of the flag under
which they will have thriven, and as willing to defend it
against any invading enemy as they are now unquestionably
indifferent. Partially elected councils, local elected boards,
&c, serve only as contrivances to foster discontent and en-
courage jobbery. They open a rift which time will widen,
and which will create for us, on a smaller scale, the condi-
tions which have so troubled us in Ireland, where each con-
cession of popular demands makes the maintenance of the
connection more difficult. In the Pacific colonies self-govern-
ment is a natural right ; the colonists are part of ourselves,
and have as complete a claim to the management of their own
affairs as we have to the management of ours. The less we
interfere with them the more heartily they identify themselves
with us. But if we choose besides to indulge our ambition
with an empire, if we determine to keep attached to our do-
minion countries which, like the East Indies, have been con-
quered by the sword, countries, like the West Indies, which,
however acquired, are occupied by races enormously outnum-
bering us, many of whom do not speak our language, are not

England's Duty. 91

connected with us by sentiment, and not visibly connected by
interest, with whom our own people will not intermarry or
hold social intercourse, but keep aloof from, as superior from
inferior — to impose on such countries forms of self-govern-
ment at which we have ourselves but lately arrived, to put it
in the power of these overwhelming numbers to shake us off
if they please, and to assume that when our real motive has
been only to save ourselves trouble they will be warmed into
active loyalty by gratitude for the confidence which we pre-
tend to place in them, is to try an experiment which we have
not the slightest right to expect to be successful, and which
if it fails is fatal.

Once more, if we mean to keep the blacks as British sub-
jects, we are bound to govern them, and to govern them well
If we cannot do it, we had better let them go altogether.
And here is the real difficulty. It is not that men competent
for such a task cannot be found. Among the public servants
of Great Britain there are persons always to be found fit and
willing for posts of honour and difficulty if a sincere effort
be made to find them. Alas ! in times past we have sent per-
sons to rule our Baratarias to whom Sancho Panza was a sage
— troublesome members of Parliament, younger brothers of
powerful families, impecunious peers ; favourites, with back-
stairs influence, for whom a provision was to be found ; colo-
nial clerks, bred in the office, who had been obsequious and
useful.

One had hoped that in the new zeal for the colonial con-
nection such appointments would have become impossible
for the future, yet a recent incident at the Mauritius has
proved that the colonial authorities are still unregenerate.
The unfit are still maintained in their places ; and then, to
prevent the colonies from suffering too severely under their
incapacity, we set up the local councils, nominated or elected,
to do the work, while the Queen's representative enjoys his

92 The English in the West Indies.

salary. Instances of glaring impropriety like that to which
I have alluded are of course rare, and among colonial govern-
ors there are men of quality so high that we would desire
only to see their power equal to it. But so limited is the
patronage, on the other hand, which remains to the home ad-
ministration, and so heavy the pressure brought to bear upon
them, that there are persons also in these situations of whom
it may be said that the less they do, and the less they are en-
abled to do, the better for the colony over which they pre-
side.

The West Indies have been sufferers from another cause.
In the absence of other use for them they have been made to
serve as places where governors try their 'prentice hand and
learn their business before promotion to more important sit-
uations. Whether a man has done well or done ill makes, it
seems, very little difference unless he has offended prejudices
or interests at home : once in the service he acquires a vested
right to continue in it. A governor who had been suspended
for conduct which is not denied to have been most improper,
is replaced with the explanation that if be was not sent back
to his old post it would have been necessary to provide a sit-
uation for him elsewhere. Why would it ? Has a captain of
a man-of-war whose ship is taken from him for misconduct
an immediate claim to have another? Unfortunate colonies !
It is not their interest which is considered under this system.
But the subject is so delicate that I must say no more about
it. I will recommend only to the attention of' the British
democracy, who are now the parties that in the last instance
are responsible, because they are the real masters of the Em-
pire, the following apologue.

In the time of the Emperor Nicholas the censors of the
press seized a volume which had been published by the poet
Kriloff, on the ground that it contained treasonable matter.
Nicholas sent for Kriloff. The censor produced the incrim-

Colonial Governors. 9.3

inated passage, and Kriloff was made to read it aloud. It
was a fable. A governor of a Eussian province was repre-
sented as arriving in the other world, and as being brought
up before Rhadaruanthus. He was accused, not of any
crime, but of having been simply a nonentity — of having re-
ceived his salary and spent it, and nothing more. Ehada-
manthus listened, and when the accusing angel had done
sentenced the prisoner into Paradise. ' Into Paradise ! ' said
the angel, 'why, he has done nothing!' 'True,' said Ehad-
amanthus, ' but how would it have been if he had done any-
thing ? '

' Write away, old fellow,' said Nicholas to Kriloff.

Has it never happened that British colonial officials who
have similarly done nothing have been sent into the Paradise
of promotion because they have kept things smooth and have
given no trouble to their employers at home.

In the evening of the day of the political meeting we dined
at Government House. There was a large representative
party, English, French, Spaniards, Corsicans — ladies and
gentlemen each speaking his or her own language. There
were the mayors of the two chief towns of Trinidad — Port of
Spain and San Fernando — both enthusiastic for a constitu-
tion. The latter was my neighbour at dinner, and insisted
much on the fine qualities of the leading persons in the isl-
and and the splendid things to be expected when responsible
government should be conceded. The training squadron had
arrived from Barbadoes, and the commodore and two or three
officers were present in their uniforms. There was interest-
ing talk about Trinidad's troublesome neighbour, Guzman
Blanco, the President of Venezuela. It seems that Sir Wal-
ter Raleigh's Eldorado has turned out to be a fact after all.
On the higher waters of the Orinoko actual gold mines do
exist, and the discovery has quickened into life a long un-
settled dispute about boundaries between British Guiana and

94 The English in the West Indies.

the republic. Don Guzman has been encroaching, so it was
alleged, and in other ways had been offensive and imperti-
nent. Ships were going — had been actually ordered to La
Guyra, to pull his nose for him, and to tell him to behave
himself. The time is past when we flew our hawks at game
birds. The opinion of most of the party was that Don Guz-
man knew it, and that his nose would not be pulled. Ho
would regard our frigates as picturesque ornaments to his
harbour, give the officers in command the politest reception,
evade their demands, offer good words in plenty, and nothing
else but words, and in the end would have the benefit of our
indifference. '

In the late evening we had music. Our host sang well, our
hostess was an accomplished artist. They had duets to-
gether, Italian and English, and the lady then sang 'The
Three Fishers,' Kingsley being looked on as the personal
property of Trinidad and as one of themselves. She sang it
very well, as well as any one could do who had no direct ac-
quaintance with an English sea-coast people. Her voice was
beautiful, and she showed genuine feeling. The silence when
she ended was more complimentary than the loudest ap-
plause. It was broken by a stupid member of council, who
said to me, ' Is it not strange that a poet with such a gift of
words as Mr. Kingsley should have ended that song with so
weak a line ? "The sooner it's over the sooner to sleep " is
nothing but prose.' He did not see that the fault which he
thought he had discovered is no more than the intentional
' dying away ' of the emotion created by the story in the com-
mon lot of poor humanity. We drove back across the savan-
nah in a blaze of fireflies. It is not till midnight that they
put their lights out and go to sleep with the rest of the world.

One duty remained to me before I left the island. The

1 A squadron did go while I was in the West Indies. I have not
heard that any other result came of it.

Charles Warner. 95

Warners are among the oldest of West Indian families, dis-
tinguished through many generations, not the least in their
then living chief and representative, Charles Warner, who in
the highest ministerial offices had steered Trinidad through
the trying times which followed the abolition of slavery. I
had myself in early life been brought into relations with other
members of his family. He himself was a very old man on
the edge of the grave; but hearing that I was in Port of
Spain, he had expressed a wish to see me. I found him in
his drawing room, shrunk in stature, pale, bent double by
weight of years, and but feebly able to lift his head to speak.
I thought, and I judged rightly, that he could have but a
few weeks, perhaps but a few days, to live.

There is something peculiarly solemn in being brought to
speak with a supremely eminent man, who is already strug-
gling with the moment which is to launch him into a new
existence. He raised himself in his chair. He gave me his
withered hand. His eyes still gleamed with the light of an
untouched intelligence. All else of him seemed dead. The
soul, untouched by the decay of the frame which had been
its earthly tenement, burnt bright as ever on the edge of its
release.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain,
And they breathe truth who breathe their words in pain.

He roused himself to talk, and he talked sadly, for all
things at home and everywhere were travelling on the road
which he well knew could lead to no good end. No states-
man had done better practical work than he, or work Avhich
had borne better fruit, could it be allowed to ripen. But
for him Trinidad would have been a wilderness, savage as
Avhen Columbus found the Caribs there. He belonged to
the race who make empires, as the orators lose them, who do
things and do not talk about them, who build and do not

96 The English in the West Indies.

cast down, who reverence ancient habits and institutions as
the organic functions of corporate national character ; a
Tory of the Tories, who nevertheless recognised that Tory-
ism itself was passing away under the universal solvent, and
had ceased to be a faith which could be believed in as a
guide to conduct.

He no more than any one could tell what it was now wisest
or even possible to do. He spoke like some ancient seer,
whose eyes looked beyond the present time and the present
world, and saw politics and progress and the wild whirlwind
of change as the play of atoms dancing to and fro in the sun-
beams of eternity. Yet he wished well to our poor earth,
and to us who were still struggling upon it. He was sorry
for the courses on which he saw mankind to be travelling.
Spite of all the newspapers and the blowing of the trumpets,
he well understood whither all that was tending. He spoke
with horror and even loathing of the sinister leader who was
drawing England into the fatal whirlpool. He could still
hope, for he knew the power of the race. He knew that the
English heart was unaffected, that we were suffering only
from delirium of the brain. The day would yet come, he
thought, when we should struggle back into sanity again
with such wreck of our past greatness as might still be left
to us, torn and shattered, but clothed and in our right mind,
and cured for centuries of our illusions.

My forebodings of the nearness of the end were too well
founded. A month later I heard that Charles Warner was
dead. To have seen and spoken with such a man was worth
a voyage round the globe.

On the prospects of Trinidad I have a few more words to
add. The tendency of the island is to become what Grenada
has become already — a community of negro freeholders,
each living on his own homestead, and raising or gathering
off the ground what his own family will consume. They

Future of the Island. 97

will multiph', for there is ample room. Three quarters of
the soil are still unoccupied. The 140,000 blacks will rap-
idly grow into a half -million, and the half-million, as long
as we are on the spot to keep the peace, will speedily double
itself again. The English inhabitants will and must be
crowded out. The geographical advantages of the Gulf of
Paria will secure a certain amount of trade. There will be
mei-chants and bankers in the town as floating passage birds,
and there will be mulatto lawyers and shopkeepers and news-
paper writers. But the blacks hate the mulattoes, and the
mulatto breed will not maintain itself, as with the indepen-
dence of the blacks the intimacy between blacks and whites
diminishes and must diminish. The English peasant immi-
gration which enthusiasts have believed in is a dream, a
dream which passed through the ivory gate, a dream which
will never turn to a waking reality ; and unless under the
Indian S}rstem, which our rulers will never try unless the
democracy orders them to adopt it, the English interest will
come to an end.

The English have proved in India that they can play a
great and useful part as rulers over recognised inferiors.
Even in the West Indies the planters were a real something.
Like the English in Ireland, they produced a remarkable
breed of men : the Codringtons, the Warners, and many
illustrious names besides. They governed chiefly on their
own resources, and the islands under their rule were so
profitable that we fought for them as if our Empire was at
stake. All that is gone. The days of ruling races are sup-
posed to be numbered. Trade drifts away to the nearest
market — to New York or New Orleans — and in a money
point of view the value of such possessions as Trinidad will
soon be less than nothing to us.

As long as the present system holds, there will be an ap-
preciable addition to the sum of human (coloured human)

98 The English in the West Indies.

happiness. Lighter-hearted creatures do not exist on the
globe. But the continuance of it depends on the continu-
ance of the English rule. The peace and order which they
benefit by is not of their own ci'eation. In spite of schools
and missionaries, the dark connection still maintains itself
with Satan's invisible world, and modern education contends
in vain with Obeah worship. As it has been in Hayti, so it
must be in Trinidad if the English leave the blacks to be
their own masters.

Scene after scene passes by on the magic slide. The man-
eating Caribs first, then Columbus and his Spaniards, the
French conquest, the English occupation, but they have left
behind them no self-quickening seed of healthy civilisation,
and the prospect darkens once more. It is a pity, for there
is no real necessity that it should darken. The West Indian
negro is conscious of his own defects, and responds more
willingly than most to a guiding hand. He is faithful and
affectionate to those who are just and kind to him, and with
a century or two of wise administration he might prove that
his inferiority is not inherent, and that with the same chances
as the white he may rise to the same level. I cannot part
with the hope that the English people may yet insist that
the chance shall not be denied to him, and that they may yet
give their officials to understand that they must not, shall
not, shake off their responsibilities for this unfortunate peo-
ple, by flinging them back upon themselves ' to manage their
own affairs,' now that we have no further use for them.

I was told that the keener- witted Trinidad blacks are watch-
ing as eagerly as we do the development of the Irish problem.
They see the identity of the situation. They see that if the
Radical view prevails, and in every country the majority are
to rule, Trinidad will be theirs and the government of the
English will be at an end. I, for myself, look upon Trinidad
and the West Indies generally as an opportunity for the

British Dominion. 99

further extension of the influence of the English race in their
special capacity of leaders and governors of men. We can-
not with honour divest ourselves of our responsibility for the
blacks, or after the eloquence we have poured out and the
self-laudation which we have allowed ourselves for the sup-
pression of slavery, leave them now to relapse into a state
from which slavery itself was the first step of emancipation.
Our world-wide dominion will not be of any long endurance
if we consider that we have discharged our full duty to our
fellow-subjects when we have set them free to follow their
own devices. If that is to be all, the sooner it vanishes into
history the better for us and for the world.

L.cfC.

CHAPTER IX.

Barbadoes again — Social condition of the island — Political constitution
— Effects of the sugar, bounties — Dangers of general bankruptcy —
The Hall of Assembly — Sir Charles Pearson — Society in Bridge-
town— A morning drive — Church of St. John's — Sir Graham Briggs
— An old planter's palace — The Chief Justice of Barbadoes.

Again at sea, and on the way back to Barbadoes. The
commodox'e of the training squadron had offered me a berth
to St. Vincent, but he intended to work up under sail against
the north-east trade, which had risen to half a gale, and I
preferred the security and speed of the mail boat. Among

the passengers was Miss , the lady whom I had seen

sketching on the way to the Blue Basin. She showed me
her drawings, which were excellent. She showed me in her
mosquito-bitten arms what she had endured to make them,
and I admired her fortitude. She was English, and was on
her way to join her father at Codrington College.

We had a wild night, but those long vessels care little for
winds and waves. By morning we had fought our way back
to Grenada. In the St. Vincent roadstead, which we reached
the same day, the ship was stormed by boatloads of people
who were to go on with us ; boys on their way to school at
Barbadoes, ladies young and old, white, black, and mixed,
who were bound I know not where. The night fell dark as
pitch, the storm continued, and Ave were no sooner beyond

the shelter of the land than every one of them save Miss

and myself was prostrate. The vessel ploughed on upon her
way indifferent to us and to them. We were at Bridgetown

Negroes in Barbadoes. 101

by breakfast time, and I was now to have an opportunity of
studying more at leisure the earliest of our West Indian
colonies.

Barbadoes is as unlike in appearance as it is in social con-
dition to Trinidad or the Antilles. There are no mountains
in it, no forests, no rivers, and as yet no small freeholders.
The blacks, who number nearly 200,000 in an island not larger
than the Isle of Wight, are labourers, working for wages on
the estates of large proprietors. Land of their own they
have none, for there is none for them. Work they must, for
they cannot live otherwise. Thus every square yard of soil
is cultivated, and turn your eyes where you will you see
houses, sugar canes, and sweet potatoes. Two hundred and
fifty years of occupation have imprinted strongly an English
character ; parish churches solid and respectable, the English
language, the English police and parochial system. However
it may be in the other islands, England in Barbadoes is still
a solid fact. The headquarters of the West Indian troops are
there. There is a commander-in-chief residing in a ' Queen's
House,' so called. There is a savannah where there are Eng-
lish bari-acks under avenues of almond and mahogany. Bed
coats are scattered about the grass. Officers canter about
playing polo, and naval and military uniforms glitter at the
side of carriages, and horsemen and horsewomen take their
evening rides, as well mounted and as well dressed as you
can see in Botten Bow. Barbadoes is thus in pleasing con-
trast with the conquered islands which we have not taken the
trouble to assimilate. In them remain the wrecks of the
French civilisation which we superseded, but we have planted
nothing of our own. Barbadoes, the European aspect of it at
any rate, is English throughout.

The harbour when we arrived was even more brilliant than
we had left it a fortnight before. The training squadron had
gone, but in the place of it the West Indian fleet was there.

102 The English in the West Indies.

and there were also three American frigates, old wooden ves-
sels out merely on a cruise, but heavily sparred, smart and
well set up, with the stars and stripes floating carelessly at
their sterns, as if in these western seas, be the nominal domin-
ion British, French, or Spanish, the American has a voice
also and intends to be heard.

We had no sooner anchored than a well-appointed boat
was alongside with an awning and an ensign at the stern.

Colonel , the chief of the police, to whom it belonged,

came on board in search of Miss , who was to be his

guest in Bridgetown. She introduced me to him. He in-
sisted on my accompanying him home to breakfast, and, as
he was a person in authority, I had nothing to do but obey.

Colonel , to whose politeness then and afterwards I was

in many ways indebted, had seen life in various forms. He
had been in the navy. He had been in the army. He had
been called to the bar. He was now the- head of the Bar-
badoes police, with this anomalous addition to his other du-
ties, that in default of a chaplain he read the Church service
on Sundays in the barracks. He had even a license from the
bishop to preach sermons, and being a man of fine character
and original sense he discharged this last function, I was told,
remarkably well. His house was in the heart of the town,
but shaded with tropical trees. The rooms were protected
by deep outside galleries, which were overrun with Bougain-
villier creepers. He was himself the kindest of entertainers,
his Irish lady the kindest of hostesses, with the humorous
high breeding of the old Sligo aristocracy, to whom she be-
longed. I found that I had been acquainted with some of
her kindred there long ago, in the days when the Anglo-Irish
rule had not been discovered to be a upas tree, and cultivated
human life was still possible in Connaught. Of the break-
fast, which consisted of all the West Indian dainties I had
ever heard or read of, I can say nothing, nor of the pleasant

The Constitution of Baroadoes. 103

talk which followed. I was to see more of Colonel , for

he offered to drive me some day across the island, a promise
which he punctually fulfilled. My stay with him for the
present could be but brief, as I was expected at Government
House.

I have met with exceptional hospitality from the govern-
ors of British colonies in many parts of the world. They
are not chosen like the Roman proconsuls from the ranks of
trained statesmen who have held high administrative offices
at home. They are appointed, as I said just now, from vari-
ous motives, sometimes with a careful regard to fitness for
their post, sometimes with a regard merely to routine or
convenience or to personal influence brought to bear in their
favour. I have myself seen some for whom I should have
thought other emjoloyment would have been more suitable ;
but always and everywhere those that I have fallen in with
have been men of honour and integrity above reproach or sus-
picion, and I have met with one or two gentlemen in these
situations whose admirable qualities it is impossible to praise
too highly, who in their complicated responsibilities — respon-
sibilities to the colonies and responsibilities to the authorities
at home — have considered conscience and duty to be their
safest guides, have cared only to do what they believed to be
right to the best of their ability, and have left their interests
to take care of themselves.

The Governor of Barbadoes is not despotic. He controls
the administration, but there is a constitution as old as the
Stuarts ; an Assembly of thirty-three members, nine of whom
the Crown nominates, the rest are elected. The friction is
not so violent as when the number of the nominated and
elected members is equal, and as long as a property qualifica-
tion was required for the franchise, the system may have
worked tolerably without producing any violent mischief.
There have been recent modifications, however, pointing in

104 The English in the West Indies.

the same direction as those -which have been made in Jamaica.
By an ordinance from home the suffrage has been Avidely ex-
tended, obviously as a step to larger intended changes.

Under such conditions and with an uncertain future a gov-
ernor can do little save lead and influence, entertain visitors,
discharge the necessary courtesies to all classes of his subjects,
and keep his eyes open. These duties at least Sir Charles
Lees discharges to perfection, the entertaining part of them
on a scale so liberal that if Pere Labat came back he would
suppose that the two hundred years which have gone by since
his visit was a dream, and that Government House at least
was still as he left it. In an establishment which had so
many demands upon it, and where so many visitors of all
kinds were going and coming, I had no claim to be admitted.
I felt that I should be an intruder, and had I been allowed
would have taken myself elsewhere, but Sir Charles's peremp-
tory generosity admitted of no refusal. As a subject I was
bound to submit to the Queen's representative. I cannot say
I was sorry to be compelled. In Government House I should
see and hear what I could neither have seen nor heard else-
where. I should meet people who could tell me what I most
wanted to know. I had understood already that owing to
the sugar depression the state of the island was critical. Of-
ficials were alarmed. Bankers wei'e alarmed. No one could
see beyond the next year what was likely to happen. Sir
Charles himself would have most to say. He was evidently
anxious. Perhaps if he -had a fault, he was over anxious ;
but with the possibility of social confusion before him, with
nearly 200,000 peasant subjects, who in a few months might
be out of work and so out of food, with the inflammable
negro nature, and a suspicious and easily excited public
opinion at home, the position of a Governor of Barbadoes is
not an enviable one. The Government at home, no doubt
with the best intentions, has aggravated any peril which there

Social Condition. 105

may be by enlarging the suffrage. The experience of Gov-
ernor Eyre in Jamaica has taught the danger of being too ac-
tive, but to be too inactive may be dangerous also. If there
is a stir again in any part of these islands, and violence and
massacre come of it, as it came in St. Domingo, the respon-
sibility is with the governor, and the account will be strictly
exacted of him.

I must describe more particularly the reasons which there
are for uneasiness. On the day on which I landed I saw an
article in a Bridgetown paper in which my coming there was
spoken of as perhaps the last straw which would break the
overburdened back. I know not why I should be thought
likely to add anything to the load of Barbadian afflictions.
I should be a worse friend to the colonies than I have tried
to be if I was one of those who would quench the smoking
-flax of loyalty in any West Indian heart. But loyalty, I very
well know, is sorely tried just now. The position is painfully
simple. The great prosperity of the island ended with eman-
cipation. Barbadoes suffered less than Jamaica or the An-
tilles because the population was large and the land limited,
and the blacks were obliged to work to keep themselves alive.
The abolition of the sugar duties was the next blow. The
price of sugar fell, and the estates yielded little more than
the expense of cultivation. Owners of properties who were
their own managers, and had sense and energy, continued to
keep themselves afloat ; but absenteeism had become the
fashion. The brilliant society which is described by Labat
had been melting for more than a century. More and more
the old West Indian families removed to England, farmed
their lands through agents and overseers, or sold them to
speculating capitalists. The personal influence of the white
man over the black, which might have been brought about
by a friendly intercourse after slavery was abolished, was
never so much as attempted. The higher class of gentry

106 The English in the West Indies.

found the colony more and more distasteful to them, and
they left the arrangement of the labour question to persons
to whom the blacks were nothing, emancipated though they
might be, except instruments of production. A negro can
be attached to his employer at least as easily as a horse or a
dog. The horse or dog requires kind treatment, or he be-
comes indifferent or sullen ; so it is with the negro. But the
forced equality of the races before the law made more diffi-
cult the growth of any kindly feeling. To the overseer on a
plantation the black labourer was a machine out of which
the problem was to get the maximum of work with the mini-
mum of pay. In the slavery times the horse and dog rela-
tion was a real thing. The master and mistress joked and
laughed with their dark bondsmen, knew Caesar from Pompey,
knew how many children each had, gave them small presents,
cared for them when they were sick, and maintained them
when they were old and past work. All this ended with
emancipation. Between whites and blacks no relations re-
mained save that of employer and employed. They lived
apart. They had no longer, save in exceptional instances,
any personal communication with each other. The law re-
fusing to recognise a difference, the social line was drawn the
harder, which the law was unable to reach.

In the Antilles, the plantations broke up as I had seen in
Grenada. The whites went away, and the land was divided
among the negroes. In Barbadoes, the estates were kept to-
gether. The English character and the English habits were
printed deeper there, and were not so easily obliterated.
But the stars in their courses have fought against the old
system. Once the West Indies had a monopoly of the sugar
trade. Steam and progress have given them a hundred nat-
ural competitors ; and on the back of these came the -unnat-
ural bounty-fed beetroot sugar competition. Meanwhile the
expense of living increased in the days of inflated hope and

Dangers of Bankruptcy. 107

'unexampled prosperity.' Free trade, whatever its imme-
diate consequences, was to make every one rich in the end.
When the income of an estate fell short one year, it was to
rise in the next, and money was borrowed to make ends meet ;
when it didn't rise, more money was borrowed ; and there is
now hardly a property in the island which is not loaded to
the sinking point. Tied to sugar-growing-, Barbadoes has no
second industry to fall back upon. The blacks, who are heed-
less and light-hearted, increase and multiply. They will not
emigrate, they are so much attached to their homes ; and the
not distant prospect is of a general bankruptcy, which will
throw the land for the moment out of cultivation, with a
hungry unemployed multitude to feed without means of feed-
ing them, and to control without the personal acquaintance
and influence which alone can make control possible.

At home there is a general knowledge that things are not
going on well out there. But, true to our own ways of think-
ing, we regard it as their affair and not as ours. If cheap sugar
ruins the planters, it benefits the English workman. The
planters had their innings ; it is now the consumer's turn.
What are the West Indies to us ? On the map they appear
to belong more to the United States than to us. Let the
United States take them and welcome. So thinks, perhaps,
the average Englishman ; and, analogous to him, the West
Indian proprietor reflects that, if admitted into the Union, he
would have the benefit of the American market, which would
set him on his feet again ; and that the Americans, probably
finding that they, if not we, could make some profit out of the
islands, would be likely to settle the black question for him in
a more satisfactory manner.

That such a feeling as this should exist is natural and par-
donable ; and it would have gone deeper than it has gone if
it were not that there are two parties to every bargain, and
those in favor of such a union have met hitherto with no en-

108 The English in the West Indies.

couragement. The Americans are wise in their generation.
They looked at Cuba ; they looked at St. Domingo. They
might have had both on easy terms, but they tell you that
their constitution does not allow them to hold dependent
states. What they annex they absorb, and they did not wish
to absorb another million and a half of blacks and as many
Roman Catholics, having enough already of both. Our Eng-
lish islands may be more tempting, but there too the black
cloud hangs thick and grows yearly thicker, and through
English indulgence is more charged with dangerous elements.
Already, they say, they have every advantage which the isl-
ands can give them. They exercise a general protectorate,
and would probably interfere if France or England were to
attempt again to extend their dominions in that quarter ; but
they prefer to leave to the present owners the responsibility
of managing and feeding the cow, while they are to have the
milking of it.

Thus the proposal of annexation, which has never gone be-
yond wishes and talk, has so far been coldly received ; but
the Americans did make their offer a short time since, at
which the drowning Barbadians grasped as at a floating
plank. England would give them no hand to save them from
the effects of the beetroot bounties. The Americans were
willing to relax their own sugar duties to admit West Indian
sugar duty free, and give them the benefit of their own high
prices. The colonies being unable to make treaties for them-
selves, the proposal was referred home and was rejected. The
Board of Trade had, no doubt, excellent reasons for objecting
to an arrangement which would have flung our whole com-
merce with the West Indies into American hands, and might
have formed a prelude to a closer attachment. It would have
been a violation also of those free -trade principles which are
the English political gospel. Moreover, our attitude towards
our colonies has changed, too, in the last twenty years ; we

Effects of the Sugar Bounties. 109

now wish to preserve the attachment of communities whom
a generation back we should have told to do as they liked,
and have bidden them God speed upon their way ; and this
treaty may have been regarded as a step toward separation.
But the unfortunate Barbadians found themselves, with the
harbour in sight, driven out again into the free-trade hurri-
cane. We would not help them ourselves ; we declined to let
the Americans help them ; and help themselves they could
not. They dare not resent our indifference to their interests,
which, if they were stronger, would have been more visibly
displayed. They must wait' now for what the future will
briug with as much composure as they can command, but I
did hear outcries of impatience to which it was unpleasant to
listen. Nay, it was even suggested as a means of inducing
the Americans to forego their reluctance to take them into
the Union, that we might relinquish such rights as we pos-
sessed in Canada if the Americans would relieve us of the
West Indies, for which we appeared to care so little.

If Barbadoes is driven into bankruptcy, the estates will
have to be sold, and will probably be broken up as they
have been in the Antilles. The first difficulty will thus be
got over. But the change cannot be carried out in a day.
If wages suddenly cease, the negroes will starve, and will
not take their starvation patiently. At the worst, however,
means will probably be found to keep the land from falling
out of cultivation. The Barbadians see their condition in
the light of their grievances, and make the worst of it. The
continental powers may tire of the bounty system, or some-
thing else may happen to make sugar rise. The prospect is
not a bright one, but what actually happens in this world is
generally the unexpected.

As a visit my stay at Government House was made simply
delightful to me. I remained there (with interruptions) for
a fortnight, and Lady L did not only permit, but she in-

110 The English in the West Indies.

sisted that I should be as if in an hotel, and come and go as
I liked. The climate of Barbadoes, so far as I can speak of
it, is as sparkling and invigorating as champagne. Cocktail
may be wanted in Trinidad. In Barbadoes the air is all one
asks for, and between night breezes and sea breezes one
has plenty of it. Day begins with daylight, as it ought
to do. You have slept without knowing anything about it.
There are no venomous crawling creatures. Cockroaches are
the worst, but they scuttle out of the way so alarmed and
ashamed of themselves if you happen to see them, that I
never could bring myself to hurt one. You spring out of
bed as if the process of getting up were actually pleasant.
Well-appointed West Indian houses are generally provided
with a fresh-water swimming bath. Though cold by cour-
tesy the water seldom falls below 65°, and you float luxu-
riously upon it without dread of chill. The early coffee fol-
lows the bath, and then the stroll under the big trees,
among strange flowers, or in the grotto with the ferns
and humming birds. If it were part of one's regular life, I
suppose that one would want something to do. Sir Charles
was the most active of men, and had been busy in his office
for an hour before I had come down to lounge. But for my-
self I discovered that it was possible, at least for an interval,
to be perfectly idle and perfectly happy, surrounded by the
daintiest beauties of an English hothouse, with palm trees
waving like fans to cool one, and with sensitive plants, which
are common as daisies, strewing themselves under one's feet
to be trodden upon.

After breakfast the heat would be considerable, but with
an umbrella I could walk about the town and see what was
to be seen. Alas ! here one has something to desire. Where
Pere Labat saw a display of splendour which reminded him
of Paris and London, you now find only stores on the Ameri-
can pattern, for the most part American goods, bad in qual«

The Hall of the Assembly. Ill

ity and extravagantly dear. Treaty or no treaty, it is to
America that the trade is drifting, and we might as well con-
cede with a good grace what must soon come of itself
whether we like it or not. The streets are relieved from
ugliness by the trees and by occasional handsome buildings.
Often I stood to admire the pea-green Nelson. Once I went
into the Assembly where the legislature was discussing more
or less unquietly the prospects of the island. The question
of the hour was economy. In the opiniou of patriot Bar-
badians, sore at the refusal of the treaty, the readiest way to
reduce expenditure was to diminish the salaries of officials
from the governor downwards. The officials, knowing that
they were very moderately paid already, naturally demurred.
The most interesting part of the thing to me was the hall in
which the proceedings were going on. It is handsome in it-
self, and has a series of painted windows representing the
English sovereigns from James I. to Queen Victoria. Among
them in his proper place stood Oliver Cromwell, the only
formal recognition of the great Protector that I know of in
any part of the English dominions. Barbadoes had been
Cavalier in its general sympathies, but has taken an inde-
pendent view of things, and here too has had an opinion of
its own.

Hospitality was always a West Indian characteristic. There
were luncheons and dinners, and distinguished persons to be
met and talked to. Among these I had the special good for-
tune of making acquaintance with Sir Charles Pearson, now
commanding-in-chief in those parts. Even in these days,
crowded as they are by small incidents made large by news-
papers, we have not yet forgotten the defence of a fort in the
interior of Zululand where Sir Charles Pearson and his small
garrison were cut off from their communications with Natal.
For a week or two he was the chief object of interest in every
English house. In obedience to orders which it was not his

112 The English in the West Indies.

business to question, lie had assisted Sir T. Shepstone in the
memorable annexation of the Transvaal. He had seen also
to what that annexation led, and, being a truth-speaking
man, he did not attempt to conceal the completeness of our
defeat. Our military establishment in the West Indies is of
modest dimensions ; but a strong English soldier, who says
little and does his duty, and never told a lie in his life or
could tell one, is a comforting figure to fall in with. One
feels that there will be something to retire upon when parlia-
mentary oratory has finished its work of disintegration.

The pleasantest incident of the day was the evening drive

with Lady L . She would take me out shortly before

sunset, and bring me back again when the tropical stars were
showing faintly and the fireflies had begun to sparkle about
the bushes, and the bats were flitting to and fro after the
night moths like spirits of darkness chasing human souls.

The neighbourhood of Bridgetown has little natural beau-
ty ; but the roads are excellent, the savannah picturesque
with riding parties and polo players and lounging red jack-
ets, every one being eager to pay his or her respect to
the gracious lady of the Queen's representative. We called
at pretty villas where there would be evening teas and lawn
tennis in the cool. The society is not extensive, and here
would be collected most of it that was worth meeting. At
one of these parties I fell in with the officers of the American
squadron, the commodore a very interesting and courteous
gentleman whom I should have taken for a fellow-country-
man. There are many diamonds, and diamonds of the first
water, among the Amei'icans as among ourselves ; but the

cutting and setting is different. Commodore D was cut

and set like an Englishman. He introduced me to one of
his brother officers who had been in Hayti. Spite of Sir
Spencer St. John, spite of all the confirmatory evidence which
I had heard, I was still incredulous about the alleged canni-

A Morning Drive. 113

balism there. To my inquiries this gentleman had only the
same answer to give. The fact was beyond question. He
had himself known instances of it.

The commodore had a grievance against us illustrating
West Indian manners. These islands are as nervous about
their health as so many old ladies. The yellow flags float on
ship after ship in the Bridgetown roadstead, and crews, pas-
sengers, and cargoes are sternly interdicted from the land.
Jamaica was in ill name from small-pox, and, as Cuba will not
drop its intercourse with Jamaica, Cuba falls also under the
ban. The commodore had directed a case of cigars from
Havana to meet him at Barbadoes. They arrived, but might
not be transferred from the steamer which brought them,
even on board his own frigate, lest he might bring infection
on shore in his cigar case. They went on to England, to
reach him perhaps eventually in New York.

Colonel 's duties, as chief of the police, obliged him

to make occasional rounds to visit his stations. He recol-
lected his promise, and he invited me one morning to ac-
company him. "We were to breakfast at his house on our
return, so I anticipated an excursion of a few miles at the
utmost. He called for me soon after sunrise with a light
carriage and a brisk pair of horses. We were rapidly clear
of the town. The roads were better than the best I have
seen out of England, the only fault in them being the white
coral dust which dazzles and blinds the eyes. Everywhere
there were signs of age and of long occupation. The stone
steps leading up out of the road to the doors of the houses
had been worn by human feet for hundreds of years. The
houses themselves were old, and as if suffering from the uni-
versal depression — gates broken, gardens disordered, and
woodwork black and blistered for want of paint. But if the
habitations were neglected, there was no neglect in the fields.
Sugar cane alternated with sweet potatoes and yams and

114 The English in the West Indies.

other strange things the names of which I heard and forgot ;
but there was not a weed to be seen or broken fence where
fence was needed. The soil was clean, every inch of it, as
well hoed and trenched as in a Middlesex market garden.
Salt fish and flour, which is the chief food of the blacks, is
imported ; but vegetables enough are raised in Barbadoes to
keep the cost of living incredibly low ; and, to my unin-'
structed eyes, it seemed that even if sugar and wages did
fail there could be no danger of any sudden famine. The
people were thick as rabbits in a warren ; women with
loaded baskets on their heads laughing and chirruping, men
driving donkey carts, four donkeys abreast, smoking their
early pipes as if they had not a care in the world, as, indeed,
they have not.

On we went, the Colonel's horses stepping out twelve
miles an hour, and I wondered privately what was to become
of our breakfast. We were striking right across the island,
along the coral ridge which forms the backbone of it. We
found ourselves at length in a grove of orange trees and
shaddocks, at the old church of St. John's, which stands
upon a perpendicular cliff ; Codrington College on the level
under our feet, and beyond us the open Atlantic and the
everlasting breakers from the trade winds fringing the shore
with foam. Far out were the white sails of the fishing
smacks. The Barbadians are careless of weather, and the
best of boat sailors. It was very pretty in the bright morn-
ing, and the church itself was not the least interesting part
of the scene. The door was wide open. We went in, and I
seemed to be in a parish church in England as parish
churches used to be when I was a child. There were the
old-fashioned seats, the old unadorned communion table,
the old pulpit and reading desk and the clerk's desk below,
with the lion and the unicorn conspicuous above the chancel
arch. The white tablets on the wall bore familiar names

St. JohrCs Church. 115

dating back into the last century. On the floor were flag-
stones still older with armorial bearings and letters cut in
stone, half effaced by the feet of the generations who had
trodden up the same aisles till they, too, lay down and rested
there. And there was this, too, to be remembered — that
these Barbadian churches, old as they might seem, had be-
longed always to the Anglican communion. No mass had
ever been said at that altar. It was a milestone on the high
road of time, and was venerable to me at once for its antiq-
uity and for the era at which it had begun to exist.

At the porch was an ancient slab on which was a coat of
arms, a crest with a hand and sword, and a motto, ' Sic nos,
sic nostra tuemur.' The inscription said that it was in mem-
ory of Michael Mahon, 'of the kingdom of Ireland,' erected
by his children and grandchildren. "Who was Michael Mahon?
Some expatriated, so-called rebel, I suppose, whose sword
could not defend him from being Barbados'd with so many
other poor wretches who were sent the same road — victims
of the tragi-comedy of the English government of Ireland.
There were plenty of them wandering about in Labat's time,
ready, as Labat observes, to lend a help to the French, should
they take a fancy to land a force in the island.

The churchyard was scarcely so home-like. The graves
were planted with tropical shrubs and flowers. Palms waved
over the square stone monuments, stephanotis and jessa-
mine crept about the iron railings. The primroses and
hyacinths and violets, with which we dress the mounds under
which our friends are sleeping, will not grow in the tropics.
In the place of them are the exotics of our hothouses. We
too are, perhaps, exotics of another kind in these islands, and
may not, after all, have a long abiding place in them.

Colonel , who with his secular duties combined serious

and spiritual feeling, was a friend of the clergyman of St.
John's, and hoped to introduce me to him. This gentleman,

116 The English in the West Indies.

however, was absent from home. Our round was still but half
completed ; we had to mount again and go another seven
miles to inspect a police station. The police themselves were,
of course, blacks — well-grown fine men, in a high state of dis-
cijDline. Our visit was not expected, but all was as it should
be ; the rooms well swept and airy, the horses in good condi-
tion, stable clean, harness and arms polished and ready for
use. Serious as might be the trials of the Barbadians and
decrepit the financial condition, there were no symptoms of
neglect either on the farms or in the social machinery.

Altogether we drove between thirty and forty miles that
morning. We were in time for breakfast after all, and I had
seen half the island. It is like the Isle of Thanet, or the
country between Calais and Boulogne. One characteristic
feature must not be forgotten : there are no rivers and no
waterpower ; steam engines have been introduced, but the
chief motive agent is still the never-ceasing trade wind. You
see windmills everywhere, as it was in the time of Labat.
The planters are reproached as being behind the age ; they
are told that with the latest improvements they might still
defy their beetroot enemy. It may be so, but a wind which
never rests is a force which costs little, and it is possible that
they understand their own business best.

Another morning excursion showed me the rest of the
country, and introduced me to scenes and persons still more
interesting. Sir Graham Briggs l is perhaps the most dis-
tinguished representative of the old Barbadian families. He
is, or was, a man of large fortune, with vast estates in this and
other islands. A few years ago, when prospects were brighter,
he was an advocate of the constitutional development so much
recommended from England. The West Indian Islands were

1 As I correct the proofs I learn, to my great sorrow, that Sir Graham
is dead. I have lost in him a lately made but valued friend ; and the
colony has lost the ablest of its legislators.

Sir Graham Briggs. 117

to be confederated into a dominion like that of Canada, to
take over the responsibilities of government, and to learn to
stand alone. The decline in the value of property, the gen-
eral decay of the white interest in the islands, and the rapid
increase of the blacks, taught those who at one time were
ready for the change what the real nature of it would be.
They have paused to consider ; and the longer they consider
the less they like it.

Sir Graham had called upon me at Government House, and
had spoken fully and freely about the offered American sugar
treaty. As a severe sufferer he was naturally irritated at the
rejection of it ; and in the mood in which I found him, I
should think it possible that if the Americans would hold
their hands out with an offer of admission into the Union, he
and a good many other gentlemen would meet them halfway.
He did not say so — I conjecture only from natural probabili-
ties, and from what I should feel myself if I were in their po-
sition. Happily the temptation cannot fall in their way. An
American official laconically summed up the situation to me :
' As satellites, sir, as much as you please ; but as part of the
primary — no, sir.' The Americans will not take them into
the Union ; they must remain, therefore, with their English
primary and make the best of it ; neither as satellites, for
they have no proper motion of their own, nor as incorporated
in the British Empire, for they derive no benefit from their
connection with it, but as poor relations distantly acknowl-
edged. I did not expect that Sir Graham would have more
to say to me than he had said already ; but he was a culti-
vated and noteworthy person, his house was said to be the
most splendid of the old Barbadian merchant palaces, and
I gratefully accepted an invitation to pay him a short visit.

I started as before in the early morning, before the sun was
above the trees. The road followed the line of the shore.
Originally, I believe, Barbadoes was like the Antilles, covered

118 The English in the West Indies.

with forest. In the interior little remains save cabbgae palms
and detached clumps of mangy-looking mahogany trees.
The forest is gone, and human beings have taken the place of
it. For ten miles I was driving through a string of straggling
villages, each cottage or cabin having its small vegetable gar-
den and clump of plantains. Being on the western or shel-
tered side of the island, the sea was smooth and edged with
mangrove, through which at occasional openings we saw the
shining water and the white coral beach, and fishing boats
either drawn up upon it or anchored outside with their sails
up. Trees had been planted for shade among the houses.
There were village greens with great silk- cotton trees, ban-
yans and acacias, mangoes and oranges, and shaddocks with
their large fruit glowing among the leaves like great golden
melons. The people swarmed, children tumbling about half
miked, so like each other that one wondered whether their
mothers knew their own from their neighbours' ; the fisher-
man's wives selling flying fish, of which there are infinite
numbers. It was an innocent, pretty scene. One missed
green fields with cows upon them. Guinea grass, which is
all that they have, makes excellent fodder, but is ugly (o
look at ; and is cut and carried, not eaten where it grows.
Of animal life there were innumerable donkeys — no black
man will walk if he can find a donkey to carry him — in-
finite poultry, and pigs, familiar enough, but not allowed a
free entry into the cabins as in Ireland. Of birds there was
not any great variety. The humming birds preferred less
populated quarters. There were small varieties of finches
and sparrows and buntings, winged atoms without beauty of
form or colour ; there were a few wild pigeons ; but the pre-
vailing figure was the Barbadian crow, a little fellow no
bigger than a blackbird, a diminutive jackdaw, who gets his
living upon worms and insects and parasites, and so tame
that he would perch upon a boy's head if he saw a chance of

Negro Women. 119

finding anything eatable there. The women dress ill in Bar-
badoes, for they imitate English ladies ; but no dress can
conceal the grace of their forms when they are young. It
struck PerC Labat two centuries ago, and time and their sup-
posed sufferings as slaves have made no difference. They
work harder than the men, and are used as beasts of burden
to fetch and carry, but they carry their loads on their heads,
and thus from childhood have to stand upright with the
neck straight and firm. They do not spoil their shapes with
stays, or their walk with high-heeled shoes. They jnant their
feet firmly on the ground. Every movement is elastic and
rounded, and the grace of body gives, or seems to give, grace
also to the eyes and expression. Poor things ! it cannot
compensate for their colour, which now when they are free is
harder to bear than when they were slaves. Their prettiness,
such as it is, is short-lived. They grow old early, and an old
negress is always hideous.

After keeping by the sea for an hour we turned inland, and
at the foot of a steep hill we met my host, who transferred me
to his own carriage. We had still four or five miles to go
through cane fields and among sugar mills. At the end of
them we came to a grand avenue of cabbage palms, a hun-
dred or a hundred and twenty feet high. How their slim
stems with their dense coronet of leaves survive a hurricane
is one of the West Indian marvels. They escape destruction
by the elasticity with which they yield to it. The branches
which in a calm stand out symmetrically, forming a circle of
which the stem is the exact centre, bend round before a vio-
lent wind, are pressed close together, and stream out hori-
zontally like a horse's tail.

The avenue led up to Sir Graham's house, which stands
800 feet above the sea. The garden, once the wonder of the
island, was running wild, though rare trees and shrubs sur-
vived from its ancient splendour. Among them were two

120 The English in the West Indies.

Wellingtonias as tall as the palms, but bent out of shape by
the trade winds. Passing through a hall, among a litter of
Carib curiosities, we entered the drawing room, a magnifi-
cent saloon extending with various compartments over the
greater part of the ground-floor story. It was filled with
rare and curious things, gathered in the days when sugar
was a horn of plenty, and selected with the finest taste ; pict-
ures, engravings, gems, antiquarian relics, books, maps, and
manuscripts. There had been fine culture in the West Indies
when all these treasures were collected. The English settlers
there, like the English in Ireland, had the tastes of a grand
race, and by-and-by we shall miss both of them when they
are overwhelmed, as they are likely to be, in the revolution-
ary tide. Sir Graham was stemming it to the best of his
ability, and if he was to go under would go under like a
gentleman. A dining room almost as large had once been
the scene of hospitalities like those which are celebrated by
Tom Cringle. A broad staircase led up from the hall to long
galleries, out of which bedrooms opened ; with cool deep
balconies and the universal green blinds. It was a palace
with which Aladdin himself might have been satisfied, one of
those which had stirred the envying admiration of foreign
travellers in the last century, one of many then, now probably
the last surviving representative of Anglo-West Indian civili-
sation. Like other forms of human life, it has had its day
and could not last for ever. Something better may grow in
the place of it, but also something worse may grow. The
example of Hayti ought to suggest misgivings to the most
ardent philo-negro enthusiast.

West Indian cookery was famous over the world. Pere
Labat devotes at least a thousand pages to the dishes com-
pounded of the spices and fruits of the islands, and their fish
and fowl. Carib tradition was developed by artists from
London and Paris. The Caribs, according to Labat, only ate

Social Revolution. 121

one another for ceremony and on state occasions ; their com-
mon diet was as excellent as it was innocent ; and they had
ascertained by careful experience the culinary and medicinal
virtues of every animal and plant around them. Tom Cringle
is eloquent on the same subject, but with less scientific knowl-
edge. My own unfortunately is less than his, and I can do
no justice at all to Sir Graham's entertainment of me ; I can
but say that he treated me to a West Indian banquet of the
old sort, infinite in variety, and with subtle differences of
flavour for which no language provides names. The wine —
laid up consule Planco, when Pitt was prime minister, and the
days of liberty as yet were not — was as admirable as the
dishes, and the fruit more exquisite than either. Such pine-
apples, such shaddocks, I had never tasted before, and shall
never taste again.

Hospitable, generous, splendid as was Sir Graham's recep-
tion of me, it was nevertheless easy to see that the prospects
of the island sat heavy upon him. We had a long conversa-
tion when breakfast was over, which, if it added nothing new
to what I had heard before, deepened and widened the im-
pression of it.

The English West Indies, like other parts of the world,
are going through a silent revolution. Elsewhere the revolu-
tion, as we hope, is a transition state, a new birth ; a passing
away of what is old and worn out, that a fresh and healthier
order may rise in its place. In the West Indies the most
sanguine of mortals will find it difficult to entertain any such
hope at all. We have been a ruling power there for two
hundred and fifty years ; the whites whom we planted as
our representatives are drifting into ruin, and they regard
England and England's policy as the principal cause of
it. The blacks whom, in a fit of virtuous benevolence, we
emancipated, do not feel that they are particularly obliged to
us. They think, if they think at all, that they were ill treated

122 The English in the West Indies.

originally, and have received no more than was due to them,
and that perhaps it was not benevolence at all on our part,
but a desire to free ourselves from the reproach of slave-
holding. At any rate, the tendencies now in operation are
loosening the hold which we possess on the islands, and the
longer they last the looser that hold will become. French
influence is in no danger of dying out in Martinique and
Guadaloupe. The Spanish race is not dying in Cuba and
Puerto Kico. England will soon be no more than a name in
Barbadoes and the Antilles. Having acquitted our con-
science by emancipation, we have left our West Indian inter-
est to sink or swim. Our principle has been to leave each
part of our empire (except the East Indies) to take care of
itself : we give the various inhabitants liberty, and what we
understand by fair play ; that we have any further moral re-
sponsibilities towards them we do not imagine, even in our
dreams, when they have ceased to be of commercial impor-
tance to us ; and we assume that the honour of being British
subjects will suffice to secure their allegiance. It will not
suffice, as we shall eventually discover. We have decided
that if the West Indies are to become again prosperous they
must recover by their own energy. Our other colonies can
do without help ; why not they ? We ought to remember
that they are not like the other colonies. We occupied them
at a time when slavery was considered a lawful institution,
profitable to ourselves and useful to the souls of the negroes,
who were brought by it within reach of salvation. We be-

1 It was on this ground alone that slavery was permitted in the
French islands. Labat says :

' C'est vine loi tres-ancienne que les terres soumises aux rois de
France rendent libres tous ceux qui s'y peuvent retirer. C'est ce qui
fit que le roi Louis XIII, de glorieuse menioire, aussi pieux qu'il etoit
sage, eut toutes les peines du monde a consentir que les premiers habi-
tants des isles eussent des esclaves : et ne se rendit enlin qu'aux pres-

West Indian Confederation. 123

came ourselves the chief slave dealers iu the world. We peo-
pled our islands with a population of blacks more dense by
far in proportion to the whites than France or Spain ever
ventured to do. We did not recognise, as the French and
Spaniards did, that if our western colonies were permanent-
ly to belong to us, we must occupy them ourselves. We
thought only of the immediate profit which was to be gath-
ered cut of the slave gangs ; and the disproportion of the
two races — always dangerously large — has increased with
ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. It is now
beyond control on the old lines. The scanty whites are told
that they must work out their own salvation on equal terms
with their old servants. The relation is an impossible one.
The independent energy which we may fairly look for in
Australia and New Zealand is not to be looked for in Ja-
maica and Barbadoes ; and the problem must have a new
solution.

Confederation is to be the remedy, we are told. Let the
islands be combined under a constitution. The whites col-
lectively will then be a considerable body, and can assert
themselves successfully. Confederation is, as I said before of
the movement in Trinidad, but a turn of the kaleidoscope,
the same pieces with a new pattern. A West Indian self-
governed Dominion is possible only with a full negro vote.
If the whites are to combine, so will the blacks. It will be a
rule by the blacks and for the blacks. Let a generation or
two pass by and carry away with them the old traditions, and
an English governor-general will be found presiding over a
black council, delivering the speeches made for him by a

santes sollicitations qu'on luy faisoit de leur octroyer cette permission
queparce qu'on lui remontra que c'etoit ira moyen infaillible et I'unique
qu'il y eut pour inspirer le ciilte du vrai Dieu aux Africains, les retirer
de l'idolatrie, et les faire perseverer jusqu'a la mort dans la religion
chretienue qu'on leur feroit emurasser. ' — Vol. iv. p. 14.

124

The English in the West Indies.

({$<

black prime minister ; and how long could this endure ? No
English gentleman would consent to occupy so absurd a sit-
uation. The two races are not equal and will not blend. If
the white j^eople do not depart of themselves, black legislation
will make it impossible for any of them to stay who would
not be better out of the way. The Anglo-Irish Protestants
will leave Ireland if there is an Irish Catholic parliament in
College Green ; the whites, for the same reason, will leave
the West Indies ; and in one and the other the connection
with the British Empire will disappear along with them. It
must be so ; only politicians whose horizon does not extend
beyond their personal future, and whose ambition is only to se-
cure the immediate triumph of their party, can expect any-
thing else.

Before my stay at Barbadoes ended, I had an opportunity
of meeting at dinner a negro of pure blood who has risen to
eminence by his own talent and character. He has held the
office of attorney-general. He is now chief justice of the
island. Exceptions are supposed proverbially to prove noth-
ing, or to prove the opposite of what they appear to prove.
When a particular phenomenon occurs rarely, the probabili-
ties are strong against the recurrence of it. Having heard
the craniological and other objections to the supposed identity
of the negro and white races, I came to the opinion long ago in
Africa, and I have seen no reason to change it, that whether
they are of one race or not there is no original or congeni-
tal difference of capacity between them, any more than there
is between a black horse and a black dog and a white horse
and a white dog. With the same chances and with the same
treatment, I believe that distinguished men would be pro-
duced equally from both races, and Mr. 's well-earned

success is an additional evidence of it. But it does not fol-
low that what can be done eventually can be done immedi-
ately, and the gulf which divides the colours is no arbitrary

History of Human Development. 125

prejudice, but has been opened by the centuries of training
and discipline which have given us the start in the race. "We
set it down to slavery. It would be far truer to set it down
to freedom. The African blacks have been free enough for
thousands, perhaps for tens of thousands of years, and it has
been the absence of restraint which has prevented them from
becoming civilised. Generation has followed generation, and
the children are as like their father as the successive genera-
tions of apes. The whites, it is likely enough, succeeded one
another with the same similarity for a long series of ages. It
is now supposed that the human race has been upon the planet
for a hundred thousand years at least, and the first traces of
civilisation cannot be thrown back at farthest beyond six
thousand. During all those ages mankind went on treading
in the same steps, century after century making no more ad-
vance than the birds and beasts. In Egypt or in India or one
knows not where, accident or natural development quickened
into life our moral and intellectual faculties ; and these facul-
ties have grown into what we now experience, not in the free-
dom in which the modern takes delight, but under the sharp
rule of the strong over the weak, of the wise over the unwise.
Our own Anglo-Norman race has become capable of self-gov-
ernment only after a thousand years of civil and spiritual au-
thority. European government, European instruction, con-
tinued steadily till his natural tendencies are superseded by a
higher instinct, may shorten the probation period of the ne-
gro. Individual blacks of exceptional quality, like Frederick
Douglas in America, or the Chief Justice of Barbadoes, will
avail themselves of opportunities to rise, and the freest op-
portunities ought to be offered them. But it is as certain as
any future event can be that if we give the negroes as a body
the political powers which we claim for ourselves, they will
use them only to their own injury. They will slide back into
their old condition, and the chance will be gone of lifting

126 The English in the West Indies.

them to the level to which we have no right to say that they
are incapable of rising.

Chief Justice R owes his elevation to his English en-
vironment and his English legal training. He would not
pretend that he could have made himself what he is in Hayti
or in Dahomey. Let English authority die away, and the
average black nature, such as it now is, be left free to assert
itself, and there will be no more negroes like him in Barba-
does or anywhere.

Naturally, I found him profoundly interested in the late
revelations of the state of Hayti. Sir Spenser St. John, an
English official, after residing for twelve years in Port au
Prince, had in a published narrative with many details and
particulars, declared that the republic of Toussaint l'Ouver-
ture, the idol of all believers in the new gospel of liberty,
had, after ninety years of independence, become a land where
cannibalism could be practised with impunity. The African
Obeah, the worship of serpents and trees and stones, after
smouldering in all the West Indies in the form of witchcraft
and poisoning, had broken out in Hayti in all its old hideous-
ness. Children were sacrificed as in the old days of Moloch
and were devoured with horrid ceremony, salted limbs being-
preserved and sold for the benefit of those who were unable
to attend the full solemnities.

That a man in the position of a British resident should
have ventured on a statement which, if untrue, would be
ruinous to himself, appeared in a high degree improbable.
Yet one had to set one incredibility against another. Not-
withstanding the character of the evidence, when I went out
to the West Indies I was still unbelieving. I could not bring
myself to credit that in an island nominally Catholic, where
the French language was spoken, and there were cathedrals
and churches and priests and missionaries, so horrid a revival
of devil-worship could have been really possible. All the in-

Cannibalism in Hayti. 127

quiries which I had been able to make, from American and
other officers who had been in Hayti, confirmed Sir S. St.
John's story. I had hardly found a person who entertained a
doubt of it. I was perplexed and iincertain, when the Chief
Justice opened the subject and asked me what I thought. Had
I been convinced I should have turned the conversation, but
I was not convinced and I was not afraid to say so. I re-
minded him of the universal conviction through Europe that
the Jews were habitually guilty of sacrificing children also.
There had been detailed instances. Alleged offenders had
been brought before courts of justice at any time for the last
six hundred years. Witnesses had been found to swear to
facts which had been accepted as conclusive. Wretched
creatures in Henry Ill's time had been dragged by dozens at
horses' tails through the streets of London, broken on the
wheel, or torn to pieces by infuriated mobs. Even within
the last two years, the same accusation had been brought
forward in Russia and Germany, and had been established
apparently by adequate proof. So far as popular conviction
of the guilt of the Jews was an evidence against them, noth-
ing could be stronger ; and no charge could be without
foundation on ordinary principles of evidence which revived
so often and in so many places. And yet many persons, I
said, and myself among them, believed that although the
accusers were perfectly sincere, the guilt of the Jews was
from end to end an hallucination of hatred. I had looked
into the particulars of some of the trials. They were like
the trials for witchcraft. The belief had created the fact, and
accusation was itself evidence. I was prepared to find these
stories of child murder in Hayti were bred similarly of anti-
negro prejudice.

Had the Chief Justice caught at my suggestion with any
eagerness I should have suspected it myself. His grave dif-
fidence and continued hesitation in offering an opinion con-

128 The English in the West Indies.

firmed me in my own. I told him that I was going to Hayti
to learn what I could on the spot. I could not expect that
I, on a flying visit, could see deeper into the truth than Sir
Spenser St. John had seen, but at least I should not take
with me a mind already made up, and I was not given to
credulity. He took leave of me with an expression of pas-
sionate anxiety that it might be found possible to remove so
black a stain from his unfortunate race.

CHAPTEE X.

Leeward and Windward Islands — The Caribs of Dominica — Visit of
Pere Labat — St. Lucia — Tlie Pitons — The harbour at Castries — In-
tended coaling station — Visit to the administrator — The old fort and
barracks— Conversation with an American — Constitution of Do-
minica— Land at Roseau.

Beyond all the West Indian Islands I had been curious to
see Dominica.1 It was the scene of Kodney's great fight on
April 12. It was the most beautiful of the Antilles and the
least known. A tribe of aboriginal Caribs still lingered in
the forests retaining the old look and the old language, and,
except that they no longer ate their prisoners, retaining their
old habits. They were skilful fishermen, skilful basket
makers, skilful in many curious arts.

The island lies between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and
is one of the group now called Leeward Islands, as distin-
guished from St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, &c, which
form the Windward. The early geographers drew the line
differently and more rationally. The main direction of the
trade winds is from the east. To them the Windward
Islands were the whole chain of the Antilles, which form the
eastern side of the Caribbean Sea. The Leeward were the
great islands on the west of it — Cuba, St. Domingo, Puerto

1 Not to be confounded with St. Domingo, which is called after St.
Domenic, where the Spaniards first settled, and is now divided into tbe
two black republics of St Domingo and Hayti. Dominica lies in the
chain of the Antilles between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and was so
named by Columbus because he discovered it on a Sunday.
9

130 The English in the West Indies.

Rico, and Jamaica. The modern division corresponds to no
natural phenomenon. The drift of the trades is rather from
the north-east than from the south-east, and the names
serve only now to describe our own not very successful po-
litical groupings.

Dominica cuts in two the French West Indian possessions.
The French took it originally from the Spaniards, occupied
it, colonised it, planted in it their religion and their lan-
guage, and fought desperately to maintain their possession.
Lord Rodney, to whom we owe our own position in the West
Indies, insisted that Dominica must belong to us to hold the
French in check, and regarded it as the most important of
all our stations there. Rodney made it English, and Eng-
lish it has ever since remained in spite of the furious efforts
which France made to recover an island which she so highly
valued during the Napoleon wars. I was anxious to learn
what we had made of a place which we had fought so hard
for.

Though Dominica is the most mountainous of all the
Antilles, it is split into many valleys of exquisite fertility.
Through each there runs a full and ample river, swarming
with fish, and yielding waterpower enough to drive all the
mills which industry could build. In these valleys and on
the rich levels along the shore the French had once their
cane fields and orange gardens, their pineapple beds and
indigo plantations.

Labat, who travelled through the island at the close of the
seventeenth century, found it at that time chiefly occupied by
Caribs. With his hungry appetite for knowledge, he was a
guest in their villages, acquainted himself with their charac-
ters and habits, and bribed out of them by lavish presents of
brandy the secrets of their medicines and poisons. The
Pere was a clever, curious man, with a genial human sym-
pathy about him, and was indulgent to the faults which the

The Cavils. 131

poor coloured sinners fell into from never having known bet-
ter. He tried to make Christians of them. They were will-
ing to be baptised as often as he liked for a glass of brandy.
But he was not very angry when he found that the Christi-
anity went no deeper. Moral virtues, he concluded chari-
tably, could no more be expected out of a Carib than reason
and good sense out of a woman.

At Roseau, the capital, he fell in with the then queen of
Dominica, a Madame Ouvernard, a Carib of pure blood, who
in her time of youth and beauty had been the mistress of an
English governor of St. Kitts. When Labat saw her she was a
hundred years old with a family of children and grandchil-
dren. She was a grand old lady, unclothed almost absolutely,
bent double, so that under ordinary circumstances nothing of
her face could be seen. Labat, however, presented her with
a couple of bottles of eau de vie, under the influence of which
she lifted up to him a pair of still brilliant eyes and a fair
mouthful of teeth. They did very well together, and on part-
ing they exchanged presents in Homeric fashion, she loading
him with baskets of fruit, he giving a box in return full of
pins and needles, knives and scissors.

Labat was a student of languages before philology had be-
come a science. He discovered from the language of the
Caribs that they were North American Indians. They called
themselves Banari, which meant ' come from over sea.' Their
dialect was almost identical with what he had heard spoken in
Florida. They were cannibals, but of a peculiar kind. Hu-
man flesh was not their ordinary food ; but they ' boucanned '
or dried the limbs of distinguished enemies whom they had
killed in battle, and handed them round to be gnawed at
special festivals. They were a light-hearted, pleasant race,
capital shots with bows and arrows, and ready to do anything
he asked in return for brandy. They killed a hammer shark
for his amusement by diving under the monster and slabbing

132 The English in the West Indies.

him with knives. As to their religion, they had no objection
to anything. But their real belief was in a sort of devil.

Soon after Labat's visit the French came in, drove the
Caribs into the mountains, introduced negro slaves, and an
ordered form of society. Madame Ouvernard and her court
went to their own place. Canes were planted, and indigo
and coffee. A cathedral was built at Roseau, and parish
churches were scattered about the island. There were con-
vents of nuns and houses of friars, and a fort at the port with
a garrison in it. The French might have been there till now
had not we turned them out some ninety years ago ; English
enterprise then setting in that direction under the impulse of
Rodney's victories. I was myself about to see the improve-
ments which we had introduced into an acquisition which
had cost us so dear.

I was to be dropped at Roseau by the mail steamer from
Barbadoes to St. Thomas's. On our way we touched at St.
Lucia, another once famous possession of ours. This island
was once French also. Rodney took it in 1778. It was
the only one of the Antilles which was left to us in the re-
verses which followed the capitulation of York Town. It was
in the harbour at Castries, the chief port, that Rodney col-
lected the fleet which fought and won the great battle with
the Count de Grasse, At the peace of Versailles, St. Lucia
was restored to France ; but was retaken in 1796 by Sir
Ralph Abercrombie, and, like Dominica, has ever since be-
longed to England. This, too, is a beautiful mountainous
island, twice as large as Barbadoes, in which even at this late
day Ave have suddenly discovered that we have an interest.
The threatened Darien canal has awakened us to a sense that
we require a fortified coaling station in those quarters. St.
Lucia has the greatest natural advantages for such a purpose,
and works are already in progress there, and the long-de-
serted forts and barracks, which had been made over to

The Pitons of St. Lucia. 133

snakes and lizards, are again to be occupied by English
troops.

We sailed one evening from Barbadoes. In the grey of
the next morning we were in the passage between St. Lucia
and St. Vincent just under the 'Pitons,' which were soaring
grandly above us in the twilight. The Pitons are two conical
mountains rising straight out of the sea at the southern end
of St. Lucia, one of them 3,000 feet high, the other a few feet
lower, symmetrical in shape like sugar loaves, and so steep as
to be inaccessible to any one but a member of the Alpine Club.
Tradition says that four English seamen, belonging to the
fleet, did once set out to climb the loftier of the two. They
were watched in their ascent through a telescope. When
halfway up one of them was seen to drop, while three went
on ; a few hundred feet higher a second dropped, and after-
wards a third ; one had almost reached the summit, when he
fell also. No account of what had befallen them ever reached
their ship. They were supposed to have been bitten by the
fer de lance, the deadliest snake in St. Lucia and perhaps in
the world, who had resented and punished their intrusion into
regions where they had no business. Such is the local legend,
born probably out of the terror of a reptile which is no legend
at all, but a living and very active reality.

I had gone on deck on hearing where we were, and saw
the twin grey peaks high above me in the sky, the last stars
glimmering over their tops and the waves washing against
the black precipices at their base. The night had been
rough, and a considerable sea was running, which changed,
however, to an absolute calm when we had passed the Pitons
and were under the lee of the island. I could then observe
the peculiar blue of the water which I was told that I should
find at St. Lucia and Dominica. I have seen the sea of very
beautiful colours in several parts of the world, but I never
saw any which equalled this. I do not know the cause. The

134 The English in the West Indies.

depth is very great even close to the shore. The islands are
merely volcanic mountains with sides extremely steep. The
coral insect has made anchorages in the bays and inlets, else-
where you are out of soundings almost immediately. As to
St. Lucia itself, if I had not seen Grenada, if I had not known
what I was about to see in Dominica, I should have thought
it the most exquisite place which nature had ever made, so
perfect were the forms of the forest-clothed hills, the glens
dividing them and the high mountain ranges in the interior
still draped in the white mist of morning. Here and there
along the shore there were bright green spots which meant
cane fields. Sugar cane in these countries is always called
for brevity cane.

Here, as elsewhere, the population is almost entirely negro,
forty thousand blacks and a few hundred whites, the ratio
altering every year to white disadvantage. The old system
has not, however, disappeared as completely as in other
places. There are still white planters with large estates,
which are not encumbered as in Barbadoes. They are strug-
gling along, discontented of course, but not wholly despond-
ent. The chief complaint is the somewhat weary one of the
laziness of the blacks, who they say will work only when they
please, and are never fully awake except at dinner time. I
do not know that they have a right to expect anything else
from poor creatures whom the law calls human, but who to
them are only mechanical tools, not so manageable as tools
ought to be, with whom they have no acquaintance and no
human relations, whose wages are but twopence an hour
and are diminished by fines at the arbitrary pleasure of the
overseer.

Life and hope and energy are the qualities most needed.
When the troops return there will be a change, and spirit
may be put into them again. Castries, the old French town,
lies at the head of a deep inlet which runs in among the

The Harhour at St. Lucia. 135

mountains like a fiord. This is to be the future coaling-
station. The mouth of the bay is narrow with a high pro-
jecting ' head ' on either side of it, and can be easily and
cheaply fortified. There is little or no tide in these seas.
There is depth of water sufficient in the greater part of the
harbour for line-of-battle ships to anchor and turn, and the
few coral shoals which would be in the way are being torn
up with dredging machines. The island has borrowed sev-
enty thousand pounds on Government security to prepare for
the dignity which awaits it and for the prosperity which is to
follow. There was real work actively going on, a rare and
perhaps unexampled phenomenon in the English West Indies.

"We brought up alongside of a wharf to take in coal. It
was a strange scene ; cocoa-nut palms growing incongruously
out of coal stores, and gorgeous flowering creepers climbing
over the workmen's sheds. Volumes of smoke rose out of
the dredging engines and hovered over the town. We had
come back to French costume again ; we had left the white
dresses behind at Barbadoes, and the people at Castries were
bright as parrots in crimsons and blues and greens ; but fine
colours looked oddly out of place by the side of the grimy re-
production of England.

I went on shore and fell in with the engineer of the works,
who kindly showed me his plans of the harbour, and explained
what was to be done. He showed me also some beautiful
large bivalves which had been brought up in the scrapers out
of the coral. They were new to me and new to him, though
they may be familiar enough to more experienced naturalists.
Among other curiosities he had a fer de lance, lately killed
and preserved in spirits, a rat-tailed, reddish, powerful-looking
brute, about four feet long and as thick as a child's wrist.
Even when dead I looked at him respectfully, for his bite is
fatal and the effect almost instantaneous. He is fearless, and
will not, like most snakes, get out of your way if he hears you

136 The English in the West Indies.

coming, but leaves you to get out of his. He has a bad habit,
too, of taking his walks at night ; he prefers a path or a road
to the grass, and your house or your garden to the forest ;
while if you step upon him you will never do it again. They
have introduced the mongoose, who has cleared the snakes out
of Jamaica, to deal with him ; but the mongoose knows the
creature that he has to encounter, and as yet has made little
progress in extirpating him.

St. Lucia is under the jurisdiction of Barbadoes. It has no
governor of its own, but only an administrator indifferently
paid. The elective principle has not yet been introduced into
the legislature, and perhaps will not be introduced since we
have discovered the island to be of consequence to us, unless
as part of some general confederation. The present admin-
istrator— Mr. Laborde, a gentleman, I suppose, of French
descent — is an elderly official, and resides in the old quarters
of the general of the forces, 900 feet above the sea. He has
large responsibilities, and, having had large experience also,
seems fully equal to the duties which attach to him. He can-
not have the authority of a complete governor, or undertake
independent enterprises for the benefit of the island, as a
Rajah Brooke might do, but he walks steadily on in the lines
assigned to him. St. Lucia is better off in this respect than
most of the Antilles, and may revive perhaps into something
like prosperity when the coaling station is finished and under
the command of some eminent engineer officer.

Mr. Laborde had invited us to lunch with him. Horses
were waiting for us, and we rode up the old winding track
which led from the town to the barracks. The heat below
was oppressive, but the air cooled as we rose. The road is so
steep that resting places had been provided at intervals,
where the soldiers could recover breath or shelter themselves
from the tropical cataracts of rain which fall without notice,
as if the string had been pulled of some celestial shower bath.

The Cantonments at St. Lucia. 137

The trees branched thickly over it, making an impenetrable
shade, till we emerged on the plateau at the top, where Ave
were on comparatively level ground, with the harbour im-
mediately at our feet. The situation had been chosen by the
French when St. Lucia was theirs. The general's house, now
Mr. Laborde's residence, is a long airy building with a deep
colonnade, the drawing and dining rooms occupying the en-
tire breadth of the ground floor, with doors and windows on
both sides for coolness and air. The western front overlooked
the sea. Behind were wooded hills, green valleys, a mountain
range in the background, and the Pitonsbluein the distance.
As we were before our time, Mr. Laborde walked me out to
see the old barracks, magazines, and water tanks. They
looked neglected and dilapidated, the signs of decay being
partly hid by the creepers with which the walls were over-
grown. The soldiers' quarters were occupied for the time by
a resident gentleman, who attended to the essential repairs
and prevented the snakes from taking possession as they were
inclined to do. I forget how many of the fer de lance sort
he told me he had killed in the rooms since he had lived in
them.

In the war time we had maintained a large establishment
in St. Lucia ; with what consequences to the health of the
troops I could not clearly make out. One informant told me
that they had died like flies of yellow fever, and that the
fields adjoining were as full of bodies as the Brompton ceme-
tery ; another that yellow fever had never been known there
or any dangerous disorder ; and that if we wanted a sanitary
station this was the spot for it. Many thousands of pounds
will have to be spent there before the troops can return ; but
that is our way with the colonies — to change our minds every
ten years, to do and undo, and do again, according to parlia-
mentary humours, while John Bull pays the bill patiently for
his own irresolution.

138 The English in the West Indies.

The fortress, once very strong, is now in ruins, but, I sup-
pose, will be repaired and rearmed unless we are to trust to
the Yankees, who are supposed to have established a Pax Dei
in these waters and will permit no agressive action there
either by us or against us. We walked round the walls ; we
saw the hill a mile off from which Abercrombie had battered
out the French, having dragged his guns through a roadless
forest to a spot to which there seemed no access except 011
wings. The word ' impossible ' was not known in those days.
What Englishmen did once they may do again perhaps if
stormy days come back. The ruins themselves were silently
impressive. One could hear the note of the old bugles as they
sounded the reveille and the roaring of the /I'M dejoie when
the shattered prizes were brought in from the French fleet.
The signs of what once had been were still visible in the pa-
rade ground, in the large mangoes which the soldiers Lad
planted, in the English grass which they had introduced and
on which cattle were now grazing. There was a clump of
guavas, hitherto only known to me in preserves. I gathered
a blossom as a remembrance, white like a large myrtle flower,
but heavily scented — too heavily, with an odour of death
about it.

Mr. Laborde's conversation was instructive. His enter-
tainment of us was all which our acquired West Indian fas-
tidiousness could desire. The inevitable cigars followed, and
Mr. L. gave me a beating at billiards. There were some
lively young ladies in the party, and two or three of the ship's
officers. The young ones played lawn tennis, and we old ones
looked on and wished the years off our shoulders. So passed
the day. The sun was setting when we mounted to ride
down. So short is the twilight in these latitudes, that it was
dark night when we reached the town, and we required the
light of the stars to find our boat.

When the coaling process was finished, the ship had been

A Casual American. 139

washed clown in our absence and was anchored off beyond the
reach of the dirt ; but the ports were shut ; the windsails had
been taken down ; the air in the cabins was stifling ; so I
stayed on deck till midnight with a clever young American,
who was among our fellow-passengers, talking of many things.
He was ardent, confident, self-asserting, but not disagreeably
either one or the other. It was rather a pleasure to hear a
man speak in these flabby uncertain days as if he were sure
of anything, and I had to notice again, as I had often noticed
before, how well informed casual American travellers are on
public affairs, and how sensibly they can talk of them. He
had been much in the West Indies, and seemed to know them
well. He said that all the whites in the islands wished at the
bottom of their hearts to be taken into the Union ; but the
Union Government was too wise to meddle with them. The
trade would fall to America of itself. The responsibility and
trouble might remain where it was. I asked him about the
Canadian fishery disputes. He thought it would settle itself
in time, and that nothing serious would come of it. ' The
Washington Cabinet had been a little hard on England,' he
admitted ; ' but it was six of one and half a dozen of the
other.' 'Honours were easy; neither party could score.'
'We had been equally hard on them about Alaska.'

He was less satisfied about Ireland. The telegraph had
brought the news of Mr. Goschen's defeat at Liverpool, and
Home Kule, which had seemed to have been disposed of, was
again within the range of probabilities. He was watching
with pitying amusement, like most of his countrymen, the
weakness of will with which England allowed herself to be
worried by so contemptible a business ; but he did seem to
fear, and I have heard others of his countrymen say the
same, that if we let it go on much longer the Americans may
become involved in the thing one way or another, and trouble
may rise about it between the two countries.

140 The English in the West Indies.

We weighed ; and I went to bed and to sleep, and so
missed Pigeon Island, where Rodney's fleet lay before the
action, and the rock from Avhich, through his telescope, he
watched De Grasse come out of Martinique, and gave his
own signal to chase. We rolled as usual between the islands.
At daylight we were again in shelter under Martinique, and
again in classic regions ; for close to us was Diamond Rock
— once his Majesty's ship 'Diamond,' commissioned with
crew and officers — one of those curious true incidents, out of
which a legend might have grown in other times, that ship
and mariners had been turned to stone. The rock, a lonely
pyramid six hundred feet high, commanded the entrance to
Port Royal in Martinique. Lord Howe took possession of it,
sent guns up in slings to the top, and left a midshipman with
a handful of men in charge. The gallant little fellow held
his fortress for several months, peppered away at the French,
and sent three of their ships of war to the bottom. He was
blockaded at last by an overwhelming force. No relief could
be spared for him. Escape was impossible, as he had not so
much as a boat, and he capitulated to famine.

We stayed two hours under Martinique. I did not land.
It has been for centuries a special object of care on the part
of the French Government. It is well looked after, and, con-
sidering the times, prosperous. It has a fine garrison, and a
dockyard well furnished, with frigates in the harbours ready
for action should occasion arise. I should infer from what I
heard that in the event of war breaking out between England
and France, Martinique, in the present state of preparation
on both sides, might take possession of the rest of the An-
tilles with little difficulty. Three times we took it, and we
gave it back again. In turn, it may one dajr, perhaps, take
us, and the English of the West Indies become a tradition
like the buccaneers.

The mountains of Dominica are full in smht from Marti-

First Sight of Dominica. 141

nique. The channel which separates them is but thirty miles
across, and the view of Dominica as you approach it is ex-
tremely grand. Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Martinique
are all volcanic, with lofty peaks and ridges ; but Dominica
was at the centre of the force which lifted the Antilles out of
the ocean, and the features which are common to all are there
in a magnified form. The mountains range from four to five
thousand feet in height. Mount Diablot, the highest of them,
rises to between five and six thousand feet. The mountains
being the tallest in all the group, the rains are also the most
violent, and the ravines torn out by the torrents are the wild-
est and most magnificent. The volcanic forces are still active
there. There are sulphur springs and boiling water foun-
tains, and in a central crater there is a boiling lake. There
are strange creatures there besides : great snakes — harmless,
but ugly to look at ; the diablot — from which the mountain
takes its name — a great bird, black as charcoal, half raven,
half parrot, which nests in holes in the ground as puffins do,
spends all the day in them, and flies down to the sea at night
to fish for its food. There were once great numbers of these
creatures, and it was a favourite amusement to hunt and drag
them out of their hiding places. Labat says that they were
excellent eating. They are confined now in reduced num-
bers to the inaccessible crags about the peak which bears
their name.

Martinique has two fine harbours. Dominica has none.
At the north end of the island there is a bay, named after
Prince Rupert, where there is shelter from all winds but the
south, but neither there nor anywhere is there an anchorage
which can be depended upon in dangerous weather.

Roseau, the principal or only town, stands midway along
the western shore. The roadstead is open, but as the pre-
vailing winds are from the east the island itself forms a
breakwater. Except on the rarest occasions there is neither

142 The English in the West Indies.

surf nor swell there. The land shelves off rapidly, and a
gunshot from shore no cable can find the bottom, but there
is an anchorage in front of the town, and coasting smacks,
American schooners, passing steamers bring up close under
the rocks or alongside of the jetties which are built out from
the beach upon piles.

The situation of Koseau is exceedingly beautiful. The sea
is, if possible, a deeper azure even than at St. Lucia ; the air
more transparent ; the forests of a lovelier green than I ever
saw in any other country. Even the rain, which falls in
such abundance, falls often out of a clear sky as if not to in-
terrupt the sunshine, and a rainbow almost perpetually hangs
its arch over the island. Roseau itself stands on a shallow
promontory. A long terrace of tolerable-looking houses
faces the landing place. At right angles to the terrace,
straight streets strike backwards at intervals, palms and
bananas breaking the lines of roof. At a little distance, you
see the towers of the old French Catholic cathedral, a smaller
but not ungracefuhlooking Anglican church, and to the right
a fort, or the ruins of one, now used as a police barrack,
over which flies the English flag as the symbol of our titular
dominion. Beyond the fort is a public garden with pretty
trees in it along the brow of a precipitous cliff, at the foot of
which, when we landed, lay at anchor a couple of smart Yan-
kee schooners and half a dozen coasting cutters, while round-
ing inwards behind was a long shallow bay dotted over with
the sails of fishing boats. White negro villages gleamed
among the palms along the shore, and wooded mountains
rose immediately above them. It seemed an attractive, inno-
cent, sunny sort of place, very pleasant to spend a few days in,
if the inner side of things corresponded to the appearance.
To a looker-on at that calm scene it was not easy to realise
the desperate battles which had been fought for the posses-
sion of it, the gallant lives which had been laid down under

The Dominican Constitution. 143

the walls of that crumbling castle. These cliffs had echoed
the roar of Bodney's guns on the day which saved the British
Empire, and the island I was gazing at was England's Salamis.

The organisation of the place, too, seemed, so far as I
could gather from, official boohs, to have been carefully at-
tended to. The constitution had been touched and re-
touched by the home authorities as if no pains could be too
great to make it worthy of a spot so sacred. There is an
administrator, which is a longer word than governor. There
is an executive council, a colonial secretary, an attorney-gen-
eral, an auditor-general, and other such ' generals of great
charge.' There is a legislative assembly of fourteen mem-
bers, seven nominated by the Crown and seven elected by
the people. And there are revenue officers and excise offi-
cers, inspectors of roads, and civil engineers, and school
boards, and medical officers, and registrars, and magistrates.
Where would political perfection be found if not here with
such elaborate machinery ?

The results of it all, in the official reports, seemed equally
satisfactory till you looked closely into them. The tariff of
articles on which duties were levied, and the list of articles
raised and exported, seemed to show that Dominica must be
a beehive of industry and productiveness. The revenue,
indeed, was a little startling as the result of this army of
officials. Eighteen thousand pounds was the whole of it,
not enough to pay their salaries. The population, too, on
whose good government so much thought had been ex-
pended, was only 30,000 ; of these 30,000 only a hundred
were English. The remaining whites, and those in scanty
numbers, were French and Catholics. The soil was as rich
as the richest in the world. The cultivation was growing
annually less. The inspector of roads was likely to have an
easy task, for except close to the town there were no roads
at all on which anything with wheels could travel, the old

144 The English in the West Indies.

roads made by the French having dropped into horse tracks,
and the horse tracks into the beds of torrents. Why in an
island where the resources of modern statesmanship had
been applied so lavishly and with the latest discoveries in
political science, the effect should have so ill corresponded
to the means employed, was a problem into which it would
be curious to inquire.

The steamer set me down upon the pier and went on upon
its way. At the end of a fortnight it would return and pick
me up again. Meanwhile, I was to make the best of my
time. I had been warned beforehand that there was no hotel
in Roseau where an Englishman with a susceptible skin and
palate could survive more than a week ; and as I had two
weeks to provide for, I was uncertain what to do with my-
self. I was spared the trial of the hotels by the liberality of
her Majesty's representative in the colony. Captain Church-
ill, the administrator of the island, had heard that I was
coming there, and I was met on the landing stage by a mes-
sage from him inviting me to be his guest during my stay.
Two tall handsome black girls seized my bags, tossed them
on their heads, and strode off with a light step in front of
me, cutting jokes with their friends ; I following, and my
mind misgiving me that I was myself the object of their wit.

I was anxious to see Captain Churchill, for I had heard
much of him. The warmest affection had been expressed
for him personally, and concern for the position in which
he was placed. Notwithstanding ' the latest discoveries of
political science,' the constitution was still imperfect. The
administrator, to begin with, is allowed a salary of only
500£. a year. That is not much for the chief of such an
army of officials ; and the hospitalities and social civilities
which smooth the way in such situations are beyond his
means. His business is to preside at the council, where, the
official and the elected members being equally balanced and

The Dominican Constitution. 145

almost invariably dividing one against the other, his duty is
to give the casting vote. He cannot give it against his own
officers, and thus the machine is contrived to create the
largest amount of friction, and to insure the highest amount
of unpopularity to the administrator. His situation is the
more difficult because the European element in Roseau,
small as it is at best, is more French than English. The
priests, the sisterhoods, are French or French-speaking. A
French patois is the language of the blacks. Tbey are
almost to a man Catholics, and to the French they look as
their natural leaders, England has done nothing, absolutely
nothing, to introduce her own civilisation ; and thus Do-
minica is English only in name. Should war come, a boat-
load of soldiers from Martinique would suffice to recover it.
Not a black in the whole island would draw a trigger in de-
fence of English authority, and, except the Grown officials,
not half a dozen Europeans. The administrator can do
nothing to improve this state of things. He is too poor to
ojDen Government House to the Roseau shopkeepers and to
bid for social popularity. He is no one. He goes in and
out unnoticed, and flits about like a bat in the twilight. He
can do no good, and from the nature of the system on the
construction of which so much care was expended, no one
else can do any good. The maximum of expense, the mini-
mum of benefit to the island, is all that has come of it.

Meanwhile the island drifts along, without credit to borrow
money and therefore escaping bankruptcy. The blacks there,
as everywhere, are happy with their yams and cocoa-nuts "and
land crabs. They desire nothing better than they have, and
do not imagine that they have any rulers unless agitated
by the elected members. These gentlemen would like the
official situations for themselves as in Trinidad, and they
occasionally attempt a stir with partial success ; otherwise
the island goes on in a state of torpid content. Captain
10

146 The English in the West Indies.

Churchill, quiet and gentlemanlike, gives no personal offence,
hut popularity he cannot hope for, having no means of recom-
mending himself. The only really powerful Europeans are
the Catholic bishop and the priests and sisterhoods. They
are looked up to with genuine respect. They are reaping
the harvest of the long and honourable efforts of the French
clergy in all their West Indian possessions to make the blacks
into Catholic Christians. In the Christian part of it they
have succeeded but moderately ; but such religion as exists
in the island is mainly what they have introduced and taught,
and they have a distinct influence which we ourselves have
not tried to rival.

But we have been too long toiling up the paved road to
Captain Churchill's house. My girl - porter guides led me
past the fort, where they exchanged shots with the lounging
black police, past the English church, which stood buried in
trees, the churchyard prettily planted with tropical flowers.
The sun was dazzling, the heat was intense, and the path
which led through it, if not apparently much used, looked
shady and cool.

A few more steps brought us to the gate of the Residence,
where Captain Churchill had his quarters in the absence of
the Governor-in-Chief of the Leeward Islands, whose visits
were few and brief. In the event of the Governor's arrival
he removed to a cottage in the hills. The house was hand-
some, the gardens well kept ; a broad walk led up to the
door, a hedge of lime trees closely dipt on one side of it, on
the other a lawn with orange trees, oleanders, and hibiscus,
palms of all varieties and almond trees, which in Dominica
grow iuto giants, their broad leaves turning crimson before
they fall like the Virginia creeper. We reached the en-
trance of the house by wide stone steps, where countless liz-
ards were lazily basking. Through the bars of the railings
on each side of them there were intertwined the runners of

Captain Churchill and his Household. 147

the largest and most powerfully scented stephanotis which I
have even seen. Captain Churchill (one of the Marlborough
Churchills) received me with more than cordiality. Society
is not abundant in his Barataria, and perhaps as coming from
England I was welcome to him in his solitude. His wife, an
English creole — that is, of pure English blood, but born in
the island — was as hospitable as her husband. They would
not let me feel that I was a stranger, and set me at my ease
in a moment with a warmth which was evidently unassumed.
Captain C. was lame, having hurt his foot. In a day or two
he hoped to be able to mount his horse again, when we were
to ride together and see the curiosities. Meanwhile, he talked
sorrowfully enough of his own situation and the general help-
lessness of it. A man whose feet are chained and whose
hands are in manacles is not to be found fault with if he can-
not use either. He is not intended to use either. The duty
of an administrator of Dominica, it appears, is to sit still and
do nothing, and to watch the nickering in the socket of the
last remains of English influence and authority. Individu-
ally he was on good terms with every one, with the Catholic
bishop especially, who, to his regret and mine, was absent at
the time of my visit.

His establishment was remarkable ; it consisted of two
black girls — a cook and a parlourmaid — who ' did every-
thing,' and ' everything,' I am bound to say, was done well
enough to please the most fastidious nicety. The cooking
was excellent. The rooms, which were handsomely fur-
nished, were kept as well and in as good order as in the
Churchills' ancestral palace at Blenheim. Dominica has a
bad name for vermin. I had been threatened with centipedes
and scorpions in my bedroom. I had been warned there, as
everywhere in the West Indies, never to walk across a floor
with bare feet, lest a land crab should lay hold of ray toe or
a jigger should bite a hole in it, lay its eggs there, and bring

148 The English in the West Indies.

me into the hands of the surgeon. Never while I was Cap-
tain C.'s guest did I see either centipede, or scorpion, or
jigger, or any other unclean beast in any room of which these
girls had charge. Even mosquitoes did not trouble me, so
skilfully and carefully they arranged the curtains. They were
dressed in the fashion of the French islands, something like
the Mooi'ish slaves whom one sees in pictures of Eastern
palaces. They flitted about silent on their shoeless feet, never
stumbled, or upset chairs or plates or dishes, but waited noise-
lessly like a pair of elves, and were always in their place when
wanted. One had heard much of the idleness and careless-
ness of negro servants. In no part of the globe have I ever
seen household work done so well by two pairs of hands.
Of their morals I know nothing. It is usually said that negro
girls have none. They appeared to me to be perfectly modest
and innocent. I asked in wonder what wages were paid to
these black fairies, believing that at no price at all could the
match of them be found in England. I was informed that
they had three shillings a week each, and ' found themselves,'
i.e. found their own food and clothes. And this was above the
usual rate, as Government House was expected to be liberal.
The scale of wages may have something to do with the diffi-
culty of obtaining labour in the West Indies. I could easily
believe the truth of what I had been often told, that free la-
bour is more economical to the employer than slave labour.

The views from the drawing-room windows were enchant-
ingly beautiful. It is not the form only in these West Indian
landscapes, or the colour only, but form and colour seen
through an atmosphere of very peculiar transparency. On
one side we looked up a mountain gorge, the slopes covered
with forest ; a bold lofty crag standing out from them brown
and bare, and the mountain ridge behind half buried in mist.
From the other window we had the Botanical Gardens, the
bay beyond them sparkling in the sunshine, and on the

View from the Gardens. 149

farther side of it, a few miles off, an island fortress which
the Marquis de Bouille, of Revolution notoriety, took from
the English in 1778. The sea stretched out blue and lovely
under the fringe of sand, box trees, and almonds which grew
along the edge of the cliff. The air was perfumed by white
acacia flowers sweeter than orange blossom.

Captain C. limped down with me into the gardens for a
fuller look at the scene. Dusky fishermen were busy with
their nets catching things like herrings, which come in daily
to the shore to escape the monsters which prey upon them.
Canoes on the old Carib pattern were slipping along outside,
trailing lines for kingfish and bonitos. Others were setting
baskets, like enormous lobster pots or hoop nets — such as we
use to catch tench in English ponds — these, too, a legacy from
the Caribs, made of strong tough cane. At the foot of the
cliff were the smart American schooners which I had seen on
landing — broad-beamed, shallow, low in the water, with heavy
spars, which bring Yankee ' notions ' to the islands, and carry
back to New York bananas and limes and pineapples. There
they were, models of Tom Cringle's 'Wave,' airy as English
yachts, and equal to anything from a smuggling cruise to a
race for a cup. I could have gazed for ever, so beautiful, so
new, so like a dream it was, had I not been brought back
swiftly to prose and reality. Suddenly out of a clear sky,
without notice and without provocation, first a few drops of
rain fell, and then a deluge which set the gutters running.
We had to scuttle home under our umbrellas. I was told,
and I discovered afterwards by fuller experience, that this
was the way in Dominica, and that if I went out anywhere I
must be prepared for it. In our retreat we encountered a
distinguished-looking abbe with a collar and a gold cross,
who bowed to ray companion. I would gladly have been
introduced to him, but neither he nor we had leisure for
courtesies in the torrent Avhich was falling upon us.

CHAPTER XI.

Curiosities in Dominica — Nights in the tropics— English and Catholic
churches — The market place at Roseau — Fishing extraordinary— A
storm — Dominican hoatmen— Morning walks — Effects of the Lee-
ward Islands Confederation— An estate cultivated as it ought to be —
A mountain ride — Leave the island — Reflections.

There was much to be seen in Dominica of the sort which
travellers go in search of. There was the hot sulphur spring
in the mountains ; there was the hot lake ; there was an-
other volcanic crater; a hollow in the centre of the island
now filled with water and surrounded with forest ; there
were the Caribs, some thirty families of them living among
thickets, through which paths must be cut before we could
reach them. We could undertake nothing till Captain C.
could ride again. Distant expeditions can only be attempted
on horses. They are bred to the work. They climb like
cats, and step out safely where a fall or a twisted ankle
would be the probable consequence of attempting to go on
foot. Meanwhile, Eoseau itself was to be seen and the im-
mediate neighbourhood, and this I could manage for myself.
My first night was disturbed by unfamiliar noises and
strange imaginations. I escaped mosquitoes through the
care of the black fairies. But mosquito curtains will not
keep out sounds, and when the fireflies had put out their
lights there began the singular chorus of tropical midnight.
Frogs, lizards, bats, croaked, sang, and hissed with no inter-
mission, careless whether they were in discord or harmon}r.
The palm branches outside my window swayed in the land

Night Sounds. 151

breeze, and the dry branches rustled crisply as if they were

plates of silver. At intervals came cataracts of rain, and
above all the rest the deep boom of the cathedral bell tolling
out the hours like a note of the Old World. The Catholic
clergy had brought the bells with them as they had brought
their faith into these new lands. It was pathetic, it was
ominous music ; for what had we done and what were we
doing to set beside it in the century for which the island had
been ours ? Towards morning I heard the tinkle of the bell
of the convent adjoining the garden calling the nuns to matins.
Happily in the tropics hot nights do not imply an early dawn.
The darkness lingers late, sleep comes at last and drowns our
fancies in forgetfulness.

The swimming bath was immediately under my room. I
ventured into it with some trepidation. The basement story
in most West Indian houses is open, to allow the air free pas-
sage under them. The space thus left vacant is used for lum-
ber and rubbish, and, if scorpions or snakes are in the neigh-
bourhood, is the place where one would look for them.
There the bath was. I had been advised to be careful, and
as it was dark this was not easy. The fear, however, was
worse than the reality. Awkward encounters do happen if
one is long in these countries ; but they are rare, and seldom
befall the accidental visitor ; and the plunge into fresh water
is so delicious that one is willing to risk the chance.

I wandered out as soon as the sun was over the horizon.
The cool of the morning is the time to see the people. The
market girls were streaming into the town with their baskets
of vegetables on their heads. The fishing boats were out
again on the bay. Our Anglican church had its bell too as
well as the cathedral. The door was open, and I went in
and found a decent-looking clergyman preparing a flock of
seven or eight blacks and mulattoes for the Communion. He
was taking them through their catechism, explaining very

152 The English in the West Indies.

properly that religion meant doing one's duty, and that it was
not enough to profess particular opinions. Dominica being
Roman Catholic, and Roman Catholics not generally appreci-
ating or understanding the claims of Anglicans to the posses-
sion of the sacraments, he pointed out where the difference
lay. He insisted that we had priests as well as they ; we had
confession ; we had absolution ; only our priests did not
claim, as the Catholics did, a direct power in themselves to
forgive sins. Their office was to tell sinners that if they truly
and sincerely repented and amended their lives God would
forgive them. What he said was absolutely true ; but I could
not see in the dim faces of the catechumens that the distinc-
tion was particularly intelligible to them. If they thought at
all, they probably reflected that no divinely constituted suc-
cessor of the Apostles was needed to communicate a truism
which every sensible person was equally able and entitled to
tell them. Still the good earnest man meant well, and I
wished him more success in his missionary enterprise than
he was likely to find.

From the Church of England to the great rival establish-
ment was but a few minutes' walk. The cathedral was five
times as large, at least, as the building which I had just left
— old in age, old in appearance, with the usual indifferent
pictures or coloured prints, with the usual decorated altar,
but otherwise simple and venerable. There was no service
going on, for it was a week-day ; a few old men and women
only were silently saying their prayers. On Sundays I was
told that it was overflowing. The negro morals are as eman-
cipated in Dominica as in the rest of the West Indies. Obeah
is not forgotten ; and along with the Catholic religion goes
on an active belief in magic and witchcraft. But their relig-
ion is not necessarily a sham to them ; it was the same in
Europe in the ages of faith. Even in enlightened Protestant
countries people calling themselves Christians believe that

Streets of Roseau. 153

the spirits of the dead can be called up to amuse an evening
party. The blacks in this respect are no worse than their
white kinsmen. The priests have a genuine human hold upon
them ; they baptise the children ; they commit the dead to
the cemetery with the promise of immortality ; they are per-
sonally loved and respected ; and when a young couple marry,
as they seldom but occasionally do, it is to the priest that
they apply to tie them together.

From the cathedral I wandered through the streets of
Eoseau ; they had been well laid out ; the streets themselves,
and the roads leading to them from the country, had been
carefully paved, and spoke of a time when the town had been
full of life and vigour. But the grass was growing between
the stones, and the houses generally were dilapidated and
dirty. A few massive stone buildings there were, on which
time and rain had made no impression ; but these probably
were all French — built long ago, perhaps in the days of
Labat and Madame Ouvernard. The English hand had
struck the island with paralysis. The British flag was flying
over the fort, but for once I had no pride in looking at it.
The fort itself was falling to pieces, like the fort at Grenada.
The stones on the slope on which it stands had run with the
blood which we spilt in the winning of it. Dominica had then
been regarded as the choicest jewel in the necklace of the An-
tilles. For the last half-century we have left it to desolation,
as a child leaves a toy that it is tired of.

In Roseau, as in most other towns, the most interesting
spot is the market. There you see the produce of the soil ;
there you see the people that produce it ; and you see them,
not on show, as in church on Sundays, but in their active
working condition. The market place at Roseau is a large
square court close to the sea, well paved, surrounded by ware-
houses, and luxuriantly shaded by large overhanging trees.
Under these trees were hundreds of black women, young and

154 The English in the West Indies.

old, with their fish and fowls, and fruit and bread, their yams
and sweet potatoes, their oranges and limes and plantains.
They had walked in from the country five or ten miles before
sunrise with their loaded baskets on their heads. They
would walk back at night with flour or salt fish, or oil, or
whatever they happened to want. I did not see a single sul-
len face among them. Their figures were unconscious of lac-
ing, and their feet of the monstrosities which we call shoes.
They moved with the lightness and elasticity of leopards. I
thought that I had never seen in any drawing room in Lon-
don so many perfectly graceful forms. They could not mend
their faces, but even in some of these there was a swarthy
beauty. The hair was hopeless, and they knew it, but they
turn the defect into an ornament by the coloured handkerchief
which they twist about their heads, leaving the ends flowing.
They chattered like jackdaws about a church tower. Two or
three of the best looking, seeing that I admired them a little,
used their eyes and made some laughing remarks. They
spoke in their French patois, clipping off the first and last
syllables of the words. I but half understood them, and
could not return their shots. I can only say that if their
habits were as loose as white people say they are, I did not
see a single licentious expression either in face or manner.
They seemed to me lighthearted, merry, innocent young
women, as free from any thought of evil as the peasant girls
in Brittany.

Two middle-aged dames were in a state of violent excite-
ment about some subject on which they differed in opinion.
A ring gathered about them, and they declaimed at one an-
other with fiery volubility. It did not go beyond words ; but
both were natural orators, throwing their heads back, waving
their arms, limbs and chest quivering with emotion. There
was no persona] abuse, or disposition to claw each other. On
both sides it was a rhetorical outpouring of emotional argu-

The Market Girls. 155

merit. One of them, a tall pure blood negress, black as if she
had just landed from Guinea, began at last to get the best of
it. Her gesticulations became more imposing. She shook
her finger. Mandez this, she said, and mandez that, till she
bore her antagonist down and sent her flying. The audience
then melted away, and I left the conqueror standing alone
shooting a last volley at the retreating enemy and making-
passionate appeals to the universe. The subject of the dis-
cussion was a curious one. It was on the merits of race.
The defeated champion had a taint of white blood in her.
The black woman insisted that blacks were of pure breed,
and whites were of pure breed. Mulattoes were mongrels,
not creatures of God at all, but creatures of human wicked-
ness. I do not suppose that the mulatto was convinced, but
she accepted her defeat. The conqueror, it was quite clear,
was satisfied that she had the best of the discussion, and that
the hearers were of the same opinion.

From the market I stepped back upon the quay, where I
had the luck to witness a novel form of fishing, the most sin-
gular that I have ever fallen in with. I have mentioned the
herring-sized white fish which come in upon the shore of the
island. They travel, as most small fish do, in enormous
shoals, and keep, I suppose, in the shallow waters to avoid
the kingfish and bonitos, who are good judges in their way,
and find these small creatures exceptionally excellent. The
wooden pier ran out perhaps a hundred and fifty feet into
the sea. It was a platform standing on piles, with openings
in several places from which stairs led down to landing stages.
The depth at the extremity was about five fathoms. There
is little or no tide, the difference between high water and low
being not more than a couple of feet. Looking down the
staircases, I saw among the piles in the brilliantly clear
water unnumbered thousands of the fish which I have de-
scribed. The fishermen had carried a long net round the

156 The English in the West Indies.

platform from shore to shore, completely inclosing it. The
fish were shut in, and had no means of escape except at the
shore end, where boys were busy driving them back with
stones ; but how the net was to be drawn among the piles,
or what was to be done next, I was curious to learn. I was
not left long to conjecture. A circular bag net was produced,
made of fine strong thread, coloured a light green, and
almost invisible in the sea. "When it was spread, one side
could be left open and could be closed at will by a running
line from above. This net was let carefully down between
the piles, and was immediately swollen out by the current
which runs along the coast into a deep bay. Two young
blacks then dived ; one saw them swimming about under
water like sharks, hunting the fish before them as a dog
would hunt a flock of sheep. Their companions, who were
watching from the platform, waited till they saw as many
driven into the purse of the inner net as they could trust the
meshes to bear the weight of. The cord was then drawn.
The net was closed. Net and all that it contained were
hoisted into a boat, carried ashore and emptied. The net
itself was then brought back and spread again for a fresh
haul. In this way I saw as many fish caught as would have
filled a large cart. The contrivance, I believe, is one more
inheritance from the Caribs, whom Labat describes as doing
something of a similar kind.

Another small incident happened a day or two after, which
showed the capital stuff of which the Dominican boatmen
and fishermen are made. They build their own vessels large
and small, and sail them themselves, not afraid of the wildest
weather, and doing the local trade with Martinique and
Guadaloupe. Four of these smacks, cutter-rigged, from ten
to twenty tons burden, I had seen lying at anchor one even-
ing with an American schooner under the gardens. In the
niffht, the off-shore wind rose into one of those short violent

Dominican Boatmen. 157

tropical storms which if they lasted longer would be called
hurricanes, but in these winter months are soon over. It
came on at midnight, and lasted for two hours. The noise
woke me, for the house shook, and the roar was like Niagara.
It was too dark, however, to see anything. It died away at
last, and I slept till daybreak. My first thought on waking
was for the smacks and the schooner. Had they sunk at
their moorings ? Had they broken loose, or what had become
of them ? I got up and went down to the cliff to see. The
damage to the trees had been less than I expected. A few
torn branches lay on the lawn and the leaves were cast
about, but the anchorage was empty. Every vessel of every
sort and size wras gone. There was still a moderate gale
blowing. As the wind was off-shore the sea was tolerably
smooth for a mile or two, but outside the waves were break-
ing violently, and the foam scuds were whirling off their
crests. The schooner was about four miles off, beating back
under storm canvas, making good weather of it and promis-
ing in a tack or two to recover the moorings. The smacks,
being less powerful vessels, had been driven farther out to
sea. Three of them I saw labouring heavily in the offing.
The fourth I thought at first had disappeared altogether, but
finally I made out a white speck on the horizon which I sup-
posed to be the missing cutter. One of the first three pres-
ently dropped away to leeward, and I lost sight of her. The
rest made their way back in good time. Towards the after-
noon when the wind had gone down the two that remained
came in after them, and before night they were all in their
places again.

The gale had struck them at about midnight. Their cables
had parted, and they had been blown away to sea. The
crews of the schooner and of three of the cutters were all on
board. They got their vessels under command, and had been
in no serious danger. In the fourth there was no one but a

158 The English, in the West Indies.

small black boy of the island. He had been asleep, and woke
to find himself driving before the wind. In an hour or two
he would have been beyond the shelter of the land, and in
the high seas which then were running must have been inevi-
tably swamped. The little fellow contrived in the darkness
— no one could tell how — to set a scrap of his mainsail, get
his staysail up, and in this condition to lie head to the wind.
So handled, small cutters, if they have a deck over them, can
ride out an ordinary gale in tolerable security. They drift,
of course ; in a hurricane the only safety is in yielding to it ;
but they make fair resistance, and the speed is checked.
The most practical seaman could have done no better than
this boy. He had to wait for help in the morning. He was
not strong enough to set his canvas properly, and work his
boat home. He would have been driven out at last, and as
he had neither food nor water would have been starved had
he escaped drowning. But his three consorts saw him.
They knew how it was, and one of them went back to his as-
sistance.

I have known the fishing boys of the English Channel all
my life ; they are generally skilful, ready, and daring beyond
their years ; but I never knew one lad not more than thirteen
or fourteen years old who, if woke out of his sleep by a hur-
ricane in a dark night and alone, would have understood so
well what to do, or have done it so effectually. There are
plenty more of such black boys in Dominica, and they de-
serve a better fate than to be sent drifting before constitu-
tional whirlwinds back into barbarism, because we, on whom
their fate depends, are too ignorant or too careless to provide
them with a tolerable government.

The kind Captain Churchill, finding himself tied to his
chair, and wishing to give me every assistance towards seeing
the island, had invited a Creole gentleman from the other side
of it to stay a few days with us. Mr. F , a man about

Walks in the Neighbourhood. 159

thirty, was one of the few survivors from among the planters ;
he had never been out of the "West Indies, but was a man of
honesty and intelligence, could use his eyes, and form sound
judgments on subjects which immediately concerned him. I
had studied Roseau for myself. "With Mr. F for a com-
panion, I made acquaintance with the environs. We started
for our walks at daybreak, in the cool of the morning. We
climbed cliffs, we rambled on the rich levels about the river,
once richly cultivated, and even now the soil is luxuriant in
neglect ; a few canefields still survive, but most of them are
turned to other uses, and you pass wherever you go the ruins
of old mills, the massive foundations of ancient warehouses,
huge hewn stones built and mortared well together, telling
what once had been ; the mango trees, which the owners had
planted, waving green over the wrecks of their forgotten in-
dustry. Such industry as is now to be found is, as elsewhere
in general, the industry of the black peasantry. It is the
same as in Grenada : the whites, or the English part of them,
have lost heart, and cease to struggle against the stream. A
state of things more hopelessly provoking was never seen.
Skill and capital and labour have only to be brought to bear
together, and the land might be a Garden of Eden. All
precious fruits, and precious spices, and gums, and plants of
rarest medicinal virtues will spring and grow and flourish for
the asking. The limes are as large as lemons, and in the
markets of the United States are considered the best in the
world.

As to natural beauty, the West Indian Islands are like
Scott's novels, where we admire most the one which we have
read the last. But Dominica bears the palm away from all of
them. One morning Mr. F took me a walk up the Ro-
seau River, an ample stream even in what is called the dry
season, with deep pools full of eels and mullet. We entered
among the hills which were rising steep above us. The val-

160 The English in the West Indies.

ley grew deeper, or rather there were a series of valleys,
gorges dense with forest, which had been torn out by the
cataracts. The path was like the mule tracks of the Alps, cut
in other days along the sides of the precipices with remnants
of old conduits which supplied water to the mills below.
Eich odorous acacias bent over us. The flowers, the trees,
the birds, the insects, were a maze of perfume and loveliness.
Occasionally some valley opposite the sun would be spanned
by a rainbow as the rays shone through a morning shower out
of the blue sky. We wandered on and on, wading through
tributary brooks, stopping every minute to examine some
new fern or plant, peasant women and children meeting us at
intervals on their way into the town. There were trees to take
shelter under when indispensable, -which even the rain of
Dominica could not penetrate. The levels at the bottom of
the valleys and the lower slopes, where the soil was favourable,
were carelessly planted with limes which were in full bearing.
Small black boys and girls went about under the trees, gath-
ering the large lemon-shaped fruit which lay on the ground
thick as apples in a West of England orchard. Here was all
this profusion of nature, lavish beyond all example, and the
enterprising youth of England were neglecting a colony
which might yield them wealth beyond, the treasures of the
old sugar planters, going to Florida, to Texas, to South
America, taking their energy and their capital to the land of
the foreigner, leaving Dominica, which might be the garden
of the world, a precious emerald set in the ring of their own
Antilles, enriched by the sacred memories of glorious English
achievements, as if such a place had no existence. Dominica
would surrender herself to-morrow with a light heart to
Prance, to America, to any country which would accept the
charge of her destinies. Why should she care any more for
England, which has so little care for her? Beauties conscious
of their charms do not like to be so thrown aside. There is

English Mule. 161

no dislike to us among the blacks, they are indifferent, but
even their indifference would be changed into loyalty if we
made the slightest effort to recover it. The poor black was a
faithful servant as long as he was a slave. As a freeman he is
conscious of his inferiority at the bottom of his heart, and
would attach himself to a rational white enqiloyer with at
least as much fidelity as a spaniel. Like the spaniel, too, if
he is denied the chance of developing under guidance the
better qualities which are in him, he will drift back into a
mangy cur.

In no country ought a government to exist for which re-
spect is impossible, and English rule as it exists in Dominica
is a subject for a comedy. The Governor-General of the
Leeward Islands resides in Antigua, and in theory ought to
go on progress and visit in turn his subordinate dominions.
His visits are rare as those of angels. The eminent person,
who at present holds that high office, has been once in Nevis ;
and thrice in Dominica, but only for the briefest stay there.
Perhaps he has held aloof in consequence of an adventure
which befell a visiting governor some time ago on one of
these occasions. "When there is a constitution there is an
opposition. If there are no grievances the opposition manu-
facture them, and the inhabitants of Roseau were persuaded
that they were an oppressed people and required fuller lib-
erties. I was informed that His Excellency had no sooner
landed and taken possession of Government House, than a
mob of men and women gathered in the market place under
the leadership of their elected representative. The girls that
I had admired very likely made a part of it. They swarmed
up into the gardens, they demonstrated under the windows,
laughing, shouting, and petitioning. His Excellency first
barricaded the doors, then opened them and tried a speech,
telling the dear creatures how much he loved and respected
them. Probably they did not understand him, as few of
11

162 The English in the West Indies.

them speak English. Producing no effect, he retreated
again, barred the door once more, slipped out at a back
entrance down a lane to the port, took refuge on board his
steamer, and disappeared. So the story was told me — not
by the administrator, who Avas not a man to turn English
authority into ridicule — but by some one on the spot, who
repeated the current report of the adventure. It may be ex-
aggerated in some features, but it represents, at any rate, the
feeling of the place towards the head representative of the
existing government.

I will mention another incident, said to have occurred still
more recently to one of these great persons, very like what
befell Sancho Panza in Barataria. This, too, may have been
wickedly turned, but it was the subject of general talk and
general amusement on board the steamers which make the
round of the Antilles. Universal belief is a fact of its kind,
and though it tends to shape itself in dramatic form more
completely than the facts justify, there is usually some truth
at the bottom of it. The telegrams to the West Indies pass
through New York, and often pick up something on the way.
A warning message reached a certain colony that a Yankee-
Irish schooner with a Fenian crew was coming down to annex
the island, or at least to kidnap the governor. This distin-
guished gentleman ought perhaps to have suspected that a
joke was being played upon his fears ; but he was a landlord.
A governor-general had been threatened seriously in Canada,
why not he in the Antilles? He was as much agitated as
Sancho himself. All these islands were and are entirely un-
defended save by a police which cannot be depended on to re-
sist a desperate invasion. They were called out. Eumour
said that in half the rifles the cartridges were found afterwards
inverted. The next day dispelled the alarm. The schooner
was the creation of some Irish telegraph clerk, and the scare
ended in laughter. But under the jest lies the wretched cer-

Effects of Confederation. 163

tainty that the Antilles have no protection except in their
own population, and so little to thank England for that
scarcely one of the inhabitants, except the officials, would lift
a finger to save the connection.

Once more, I tell these stories not as if they were authenti-
cated facts, but as evidence of the scornful feeling towards
English authority. The current belief in them is a fact of a
kind and a very serious one.

The confederation of the Leeward Islands may have been a
convenience to the Colonial Office, and may have allowed a
slight diminution in the cost of administration. The whole
West Indies might be placed under a single governor with
only good results if he were a real one like the Governor-
General at Calcutta. But each single island has lost from the
change, so far, more than it has gained. Each ship of war
has a captain of its own and officers of its own trained spe-
cially for the service. If the Antilles are ever to thrive, each
of them also should have some trained and skilful man at its
head, unembarrassed by local elected assemblies. The whites
have become so weak that they would welcome the aboli-
tion of such assemblies. The blacks do not care for politics,
and would be pleased to see them swept away to-morrow if
they were governed wisely and fairly. Of course, in that
case it would be necessary to appoint governors who would
command confidence and respect. But let governors be sent
who would be governors indeed, like those who administer
the Indian presidencies, and the white residents would gather
heart again, and English and American capitalists would
bring their money and their enterprise, and the blacks would
grow upwards instead of downwards. Let us persist in the
other line, let us use the West Indian governments as asylums
for average worthy persons who have to be provided for, and
force on them black parliamentary institutions as a remedy
for such persons' inefficiency, and these beautiful countries

164 The English in the West Indies.

will become like Hayti, with Obeah triumphant, and children
offered to the devil and salted and eaten, till the conscience of
mankind wakes again and the Americans sweep them all
away.

I had an opportunity of seeing what can really be done in
Dominica by an English gentleman who has gone the right
way to work there. Dr. Nicholls came out a few years ago
to Roseau as a medical officer. He was described to me as a
man not only of high professional skill, but with considerable
scientific attainments. Either by purchase or legacy (I think
the latter) he had become possessed of a small estate on a
hillside a mile or two from the town. He had built a house
upon it. He was cultivating the soil on scientific principles,
and had politely sent me an invitation to call on him and see
what he was about. I was delighted to avail myself of such an
opportunity.

I do not know the exact extent of the property which was
under cultivation ; perhaps it was twenty-five or thirty acres.
The chief part of it was planted with lime trees, the limes
which I saw growing being as large as moderate-sized lem-
ons ; most of the rest was covered with Liberian coffee, which
does not object to the moist climate, and was growing with
profuse luxuriance. Each tree, each plant had been person-
ally attended to, pruned when it needed pruning, supjwrted
by bamboos if it was overgrowing its strength, while the
ground about the house was consecrated to botanical experi-
ments, and specimens were to be seen there of every tropical
flower, shrub, or tree, which was either remarkable for i's
beauty or valuable for its chemical properties. His limes and
coffee went principally to New York, where they had won a
reputation, and were in special demand ; but ingenuity tries
other tracks besides the beaten one. Dr. Nicholls had a
manufactory of citric acid which had been found equally ex-
cellent in E.irope. Everything which he produced was turn-

Capabilities of the Soil. 1G5

ing to gold, except donkeys, seven or eight of which were
feeding under his windows, and which multiplied so fast that
he could not tell what to do with them.

Industries so various and so active required labour, and I
saw many of the blacks at work with him. In apparent con-
tradiction to the general West Indian experience, he told me
that he had never found a difficulty about it. He paid them
fair wages, and paid them regularly without the overseer's
fines and drawbacks. He knew one from the other person-
ally, could call each by his name, remembered where he came
from, where he lived, and how, and could joke with him
about his wife or mistress. They in consequence clung to
him with an innocent affection, stayed with him all the week
without asking for holidays, and worked with interest and
goodwill. Four years only had elapsed since Dr. Nicholls
commenced his undertakings, and he already saw his way to
clearing a thousand pounds a year on that one small patch
of acres. I may mention that, being the only man in the
island of really superior attainments, he had tried in vain
to win one of the seats in the elective part of the legislature.

There was nothing particularly favourable in the situation
of his land. All parts of Dominica would respond as will-
ingly to similar treatment. What could be the reason, Dr.
Nicholls asked me, why young Englishmen went planting to
so many other countries, went even to Ceylon and Borneo,
while comparatively at their own doors, within a fortnight's
sail of Plymouth, there was this island immeasurably more
fertile than either? The explanation, I suppose, is the mis-
giving that the West Indies are consigned by the tendencies
of English policy to the black population, and that a local gov-
ernment created by representatives of the negro vote would
make a residence there for an energetic and self-respecting
European less tolerable than in any other part of the globe.
The republic of Hayti not only excludes a white man from

160 The English in the West Indies.

any share of the administration, but forbids his acquisition
or possession of real property in any form. Far short
of such extreme provisions, the most prosperous industry
might be blighted by taxation. Self-government is a beauti-
ful subject for oratorical declamation. If the fact corre-
sponded to the theory and if the possession of a vote pro-
duced the elevating effects upon the character which are so
noisily insisted upon, it would be the welcome panacea for
political and social disorder. Unfortunately the fact does
not correspond to the theory. The possession of a vote
never improved the character of any human being and never
will.

There are many islands in the West Indies, and an experi-
ment might be ventured without any serious risk. Let the
suffrage principle be applied in its fulness where the con-
dition of the people seems best to promise success. In some
one of them — Dominica would do as well as any other — let a
man of ability and character with an ambition to distinguish
himself be sent to govern with a free hand. Let him choose
his own advisers, let him be untrammelled, unless he falls
into fatal and inexcusable errors, with interference from
home. Let him have time to carry out any plans which he
may form, without fear of recall at the end of the normal
period. After ten or fifteen years, let the results of the two
systems be compared side by side. I imagine the objection
to such a trial would be the same which was once made in
my hearing by an Irish friend of mine, who was urging on
an English statesman the conversion of Ireland into a
Crown colony. ' You dare not try it,' he said, ' for if you
did, in twenty years we would be the most prosperous isl-
and of the two, and you would be wanting to follow our
example.'

We had exhausted the neighbourhood of Roseau. After a
few days Captain C. was again able to ride, and we could

A Mountain Hide. 167

undertake more extended expeditions. He provided me with
a horse or pony or something between both, a creature that
would climb a stone staircase at an angle of fort}r-five, or slide
down a clay slope soaked by a tropical shower, with the same
indifference with which it would canter along a meadow. In
the slave times cultivation had been carried up into the
mountains. There Avere the old tracks through the forest
engineered along the edges of precipices, torrents roaring
far down below, and tall green trees standing in hollows
underneath, whose top branches were on a level with our
eyes. We had to ride with macintosh and umbrella, pre-
pared at any moment to have the floods descend upon us.
The best costume would be none at all. While the sun is
above the horizon the island seems to lie under the arches of
perpetual rainbows. One gets wet and one dries again, and
one is none the worse for the adventure. I had heard that it
was dangerous. It did no harm to me. A very particular
object was to reach the crest of the mountain ridge which
divides Dominica down the middle. We saw the peaks high
above us, but it was useless to try the ascent if one could see
nothing when one arrived, and mists and clouds hung about
so persistently that we had to put off our expedition day
after day.

A tolerable morning came at last. We started early. A
faithful black youth ran alongside of the horses to pick us
up if we fell, and to carry the indispensable luncheon basket.
We rode through the town, over the bridge and by the foot
of Dr. Nicholls's plantations. We passed through lime and
banana gardens rising slowly along the side of a glen above
the river. The road had been made by the French long ago,
and went right across the island. It had once been carefully
paved, but wet and neglect had loosened the stones and tum-
bled them out of their places. Trees had driven their roots
through the middle of the track. Mountain streams had

168 The English in the West Indies.

taken advantage of convenient cuttings and scooped them
into waterways. The road commissioner on the official staff
seemed a merely ornamental functionary. We could only
travel at a foot pace and in single file. Happily our horses
were used to it. Along this road in 1805 Sir George Prevost
retreated with the English garrison of Roseau, when attacked
in force from Martinique ; saved his men and saved the other
part of the island till relief came and the invaders were
driven out again. That was the last of the fighting, and we
have been left since in undisturbed possession. Dominica
was then sacred as the scene of Rodney's glories. Now I
suppose, if the French came again, we should calculate the
mercantile value of the place to us, and having found it to be
nothing at all, might conclude that it would be better to let
them keep it.

"We went up and up, winding round projecting spurs of
mountain, here and there coming on plateaus where pio-
neering blacks were clearing patches of forest for their yams
and coffee. We skirted the edge of a valley several miles
across, on the far side of which we saw the steaming of the
sulphur springs, and beyond and above it a mountain peak
four thousand feet high and clothed with timber to the sum-
mit. In most countries the vegetation grows thin as you rise
into the higher altitudes. Here the bush only seems to grow
denser, the trees grander and more self-asserting, the orchids
and parasites on the boughs more variously brilliant. There
were tree ferns less splendid than those in New Zealand and
Australia, but larger than any one can see in English hot-
houses, wild oranges bending under the weight of ripe fruit
which was glowing on their branches, wild pines, wild be-
gonias scattered along the banks, and a singularly brilliant
plant which they call the wild plantain, but is not a plantain
at all, with large broad pointed leaves radiating out from a
centre like an aloe's, and a crimson flower stem rising up

A Mountain Ride. 1G9

straight in the middle. It was startling to see such insolent
beauty displaying itself indifferently in the heart of the wil-
derness with no human eye to look at it unless of some pass-
ing black or wandering Carib.

The track had been carried across hot streams fresh from
boiling springs, and along the edge of chasms where there
was scarcely foothold for the horses. At length we found
ourselves on what was apparently the highest point of the
pass. We could not see where we were for the trees and
bushes which surrounded us, but the path began to descend
on the other side. Near the summit was a lake formed in an
old volcanic crater which we had come specially to look at.
We descended a few hundred feet into a hollow among the
hills where the lake was said to be. Where was it, then ? I
asked the guide, for I could discover nothing that suggested
a lake or anything like one. He pointed into the bush where
it was thicker with tropical undergrowth than a wheatfield
with ears of corn. If I cared to creep below the branches for
two hundred yards at the risk of meeting snakes, scorpions,
and other such charming creatures, I should find myself on
the water's edge.

To ride up a mountain three thousand feet high, to be near
a wonder which I could not see after all, was not what I had
proposed to myself. There was a traveller's rest at the point-
where we halted, a cool damp grotto carved into the sand-
stone ; we picketed our horses, cutting leafy boughs off the
trees for them, and making cushions for ourselves out of the
ferns. We were told that if we walked on for half a mile we
should see the other side of the island, and if we were lucky
we might catch a glimpse of the lake. Meanwhile clouds
rolled down off the mountains, filled the hollow where we
stood, and so wrapped us in mist, that the question seemed
rather how we were to return than whether we should venture
farther.

170 The English in the West Indies.

While we were considering what to do, we heard steps
approaching- through the fog, and a party of blacks came
up on their way to Eoseau with a sick companion whom
they were carrying in a palanquin. We were eating our
luncheon in the grotto, and they stopped to talk to our
guide and stare at us. Two of them, a lad and a girl, came
up closer to me than good manners would have allowed if
they had possessed such things ; the ' I am as good as
you, and you will be good enough to know it,' sort of tone
which belongs to these democratic days showing itself
rather notably in the rising generation in parts of these
islands. I defended myself with producing a sketch book
and proceeding to take their likenesses, on which they fled
precipitately.

Our sandwiches finished, we were pensively consuming our
cigars, I speculating on Sir George Prevost and his party of
redcoats who must have bivouacked on that very spot, when
the clouds broke and the sun came out. The interval was
likely to be a short one, so we hurried to our feet, walked rap-
idly on, and at a turn of the path where a hurricane had torn
a passage through the trees, we caught a sight of our lake as
we had been told that perhaps we might do. It lay a couple
of hundred feet beneath us deep and still, winding awa}' round
a promontory under the crags and woods of the opposite hills :
they call it a crater, and I suppose it may have been one, for
the whole island shows traces of violent volcanic disturbance,
but in general a crater is a bowl, and this was like a reach of
a river, which lost itself before one could see where it ended.
They told us that in old times, when troops were in the fort,
and the white men of the island went about and enjoyed
themselves, there were boats on this lake, and parties came
up and fished there. Now it was like the pool in the gar-
dens of the palace of the sleeping princess, guarded by im-
penetrable thickets, and whether there are fish there, or

A Mountain Ride. 171

enchanted princesses or the huts of some tribe of Caribs,
hiding in those fastnesses from negroes whom they hate,
or from white men whom they do not love, no one knows
or cares to know. I made a hurried pencil sketch, and we
went on.

A little farther and we were out of the bush, at a rocky
terrace on the rim of the great valley which carries the rain-
fall on the eastern side of the mountains down into the Atlan-
tic. We were 3,000 feet above the sea. Far away the ocean
stretched out before us, the horizon line where sky met water
so far distant that both had melted into mist at the point
where they touched. Mount Diablot, where Labat spent a
night catching the devil birds, soared up on our left hand.
Below, above, around us, it was forest everywhere ; forest,
and only forest, a land fertile as Adam's paradise, still waiting
for the day Avhen ' the barren woman shall bear children.'
Of course it was beautiful, if that be of any consequence —
mountain peaks and crags and falling waters, and the dark
green of the trees in the foreground, dissolving from tint to
tint to grey, violet, and blue in the far-off distance. Even at
the height where we stood, the temperature must have been
70°. But the steaming damp of the woods was gone, the air
was clear and exhilarating as champagne. What a land !
And what were we doing with it ? This fair inheritance, won
by English hearts and hands for the use of the working men
of England, and the English working men lying squalid in
the grimy alleys of crowded towns, and the inheritance
turned into a wilderness. Visions began to rise of what
might be, but visions which were taken from me before
they could shape themselves. The curtain of vapour fell
down over us again and all was gone, and of that glori-
ous picture nothing was left but our own two selves and
the few yards of red rock and soil on which we were stand-

172 The English in the West Indies.

There was no need for haste now. We returned slowly to
our horses, and our horses carried us home by the way that
we had come. Captain C. went carelessly in front through
the fog, over boulders and watercourses and roots of fallen
trees. I followed as I could, expecting every moment to find
myself flying over my horse's head ; stumbling, plunging,
sliding, but getting through with it somehow. The creature
had never seen me before, but was as careful of my safety as
if I had been an old acquaintance and friend. Only one
misadventure befell me, if misadventure it may be called.
Shaken, and damp with heat, I was riding under a wild
orange tree, the fruit within reach of my hand. I picked
an orange and plunged my teeth into the skin, and I
had to remember my rashness for days. The oil in the
rind, pungent as aromatic salts, rushed on my palate, and
spurted on my face and eyes. The smart for the moment
half blinded me. I bethought me, however, that oranges
with such a flavour would be worth something, and a
box of them which was sent home for me was converted
into marmalade with a finer flavour than ever came from
Seville.

What more can I say of Dominica ? I stayed with the hos-
pitable C.'s for a fortnight. At the appointed time the re-
turning steamer called for me. I left Captain C. with a
warm hope that he might not be consigned for ever to a post
which an English gentleman ought not to be condemned to
occupy ; that if matters could not be mended for him where
he stood, he might find a situation where his courage and his
understanding might be turned to useful purpose. I can
never forget the kindness both of himself and his clever,
good, graceful lady. I cannot forget either the two dusky
damsels who waited upon me like spirits in a fairy tale. It
was night when I left. The packet came alongside the
wharf. We took leave by the gleaming of her lights. The

Reflections on English Administration. 173

whistle screamed, and Dominica, and all that I had seen,
faded into a memory. All that I had seen, but not all that
I had thought. That island was the scene of the most glori-
ous of England's many famous actions. It had been won for
its again and again by the gallantry of our seamen and sol-
diers. It had been secured at last to the Crown by the
genius of the greatest of our admirals. It was once pros-
perous. It might be prosperous again, for the resources
of the soil are untouched and inexhaustible. The black
population are exceptionally worthy. They are excellent
boatmen, excellent fishermen, excellent mechanics, ready
to undertake any work if treated with courtesy and kind-
ness. Yet in our hands it is falling into ruin. The influ-
ence of England there is gone. It is nothing. Indifference
has bred indifference in turn as a necessary consequence.
Something must be wrong when among 30,000 of our fel-
low-subjects not one could be found to lift a hand for us
if the island were invaded, when a boat's crew from Mar-
tinique might take possession of it without a show of re-
sistance.

If I am asked the question, What use is Dominica to us ?
I decline to measure it by present or possible marketable
value ; I answer simply that it is part of the dominions of the
Queen. If we pinch a finger, the smart is felt in the brain.
If we neglect a wound in the least important part of our
persons, it may poison the system. Unless the blood of an
organised body circulates freely through the extremities, the
extremities mortify and drop off, and the dropping off of any
colony of ours will not be to our honour and may be to our
shame. Dominica seems but a small thing, but our larger
colonies are observing us, and the world is observing us, and
what we do or fail to do works beyond the limits of its
immediate operation. The mode of management which
produces the state of things which I have described cannot

174 The English in the West Indies.

possibly be a right one. We have thought it wise, with a
perfectly honest intention, to leave our dependencies gen-
erally to work out their own salvation. We have excepted
India, for with India we dare not run the risk. But we have
refused to consider that others among our possessions may
be in a condition analogous to India, and we have allowed
them to drift on as they could. It was certainly excusable,
and it may have been prudent, to try popular methods first,
but we have no right to persist in the face of a failure so
complete. We are obliged to keep these islands, for it seems
that no one will relieve us of them ; and if they are to re-
main ours, we are bound so to govern them that our name
shall be respected and our sovereignty shall not be a mock-
ery. Am I asked what should be done ? I have answered
already. Among the silent thousands whose quiet work
keeps the Empire alive, find a Rajah Brooke if you can, or a
Mr. Smith of Scilly. If none of these are attainable, even a
Sancho Panza would do. Send him out with no more in-
structions than the knight of La Mancha gave Sancho — to
fear God and do his duty. Put him on his metal. Promise
him the respect and praise of all good men if he does well ;
and if he calls to his help intelligent persons who under-
stand the cultivation of soils and the management of men,
in half a score of years Dominica would be the brightest
gem of the Antilles. From America, from England, from
all parts of the world, admiring tourists would be flocking
there to see what Government could do, and curious poli-
ticians with jealous eyes admitting reluctantly unwelcome
conclusions.

Woman ! no mortal o'er tlie widespread earth

Can find a fault in thee ; thy good report

Doth reach the widespread heaven, as of some prince

Who, in the likeness of a god, doth rule

O'er subjects stout of heart and strong of hand ;

Reflections on English Administration. Yi§

And men speak greatly of him, and his land
Bears wheat and rye, his orchards bend with fruit,
His flocks breed surely, the sea yields her fish,
Because he guides his folk with wisdom. And they grow
In grace and manly virtue. '

Because 'be guides with wisdom.' That is the whole
secret. The leading of the wise few, the willing obedience
of the many, is the beginning and the end of all right action.
Secure this, and you secure everything. Fail to secure it
and be your liberties as wide as you can make them, no suc-
cess is possible.

1 S> yvvcu, oi/K av rls o~e fipoTwi' eV aireipova yaiav
veiKeoi • -Tj yap crev K\eos ovpavov evpvv iKavei '
wcrre rev ■)) /3aciA'/}os afj.vjj.ovos, hare Oeovfi^s
dvfipaaiv eV iro\\olo~i Kal Icpdi/xoiaiv d.vdo~o~u>vy
euSitcias dvix7)0'1 ' <p*pVO~i 8e ya?a yUe'Aaua
irvpovs Kal Kpidds, fiplQ-r)m 8e SevSpea Kapircp,
TiKrei 8' e/iLireSa /xrjAa, 6d\aaaa Se napexei *X^S>
e| euTjyeo-njs ' dperooo'i Se Aaol vir avrov. — Odyssey, xix. 107.

CHAPTEK XH.

The Darien canal — Jamaica mail packet — Captain W. — Retrospect of
Jamaican history — Waterspout at sea — Hayti — Jacmel — A walk
through the town — A Jamaican planter -First sight of the Blue
Mountains — Port Royal — Kingston — The Colonial Secretary — Gordon
riots — Changes in the Jamaican constitution.

Once more to Barbadoes, but merely to change there from
steamer to steamer. My course was now across the Carib-
bean Sea to the great islands at the bottom of it. The Eng-
lish mail, after calling and throwing off its lateral branches at
Bridgetown, pursues its direct course to Hayti by Jamaica,
and so on to Vera Cruz and the Darien Canal. This wonder-
fid enterprise of M. Lesseps has set moving the loose negro
population of the Antilles and Jamaica. Unwilling to work
as they are supposed to be, they have swarmed down to the
isthmus, and are still swarmiug thither in tens of thousands,
tempted by the dollar or dollar and a half a day which M.
Lesseps is furnishing. The vessel which called for us at
Dominica was crowded with them, and we picked up more
as we went on. Their average stay is for a year. At the end
of a year half of them have gone to the other world. Half go
home, made easy for life with money enough to buy a few
acres of land and 'live happy ever after.' Heedless as school-
boys, they plunge into the enterprise, thinking of nothing
but the haiwest of dollars. They might earn as much or
more at their own doors if there were any one to employ
them, but quiet industry is out of joint, and Darien has seized
their imaginations as an Eldorado.

The Darien Canal. 177

If half the reports which reached me are correct, in all the
world there is not perhaps now concentrated in any single
spot so much swindling and villany, so much foul disease,
such a hideous dungheap of moral and physical abomination,
as in the scene of this far-famed undertaking of nineteenth-
century engineering. By the scheme, as it was first pro-
pounded, six-and-twenty millions of English money were to
unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to form a highway for
the commerce of the globe, and enrich with untold wTealth the
happy owners of original shares. The thrifty French peas-
antry were tempted by the golden bait, and poured their sav-
ings into M. Lessep's lottery box. Almost all that money, I
was told, has been already sj>ent, and only a fifth of the work
is done. Meanwhile the human vultures have gathered to
the spoil. Speculators, adventurers, card sharpers, hell
keepers, and doubtful ladies have carried their charms to
this delightful market. The scene of operations is a damp
tropical jungle, intensely hot, swarming with mosquitoes,
snakes, alligators, scorpions, and centipedes ; the home, even
as nature made it, of yellow fever, typhus, and dysentery, and
now made immeasurably more deadly by the multitudes of
people who crowd thither. Half buried in mud lie about the
wrecks of costly machinery, consuming by rust, sent out
under lavish orders, and found unfit for the work for which
they were intended. Unburied altogether lie also skeletons
of the human machines which have broken down there,,
picked clean by the vultures. Everything which imagination
can conceive that is ghastly and loathsome seems to be gath-
ered into that locality just now. I wras pressed to go on and
look at the moral surroundings of ' the greatest undertaking
of our age,' but my curiosity was less strong than my disgust.
I did not see the place, and the description which I have given
may be overcharged. The accounts which reached me, how-
ever, were uniform and consistent. Not one person whom I
12

178 The English in the West Indies.

met and who could speak from personal knowledge had any
other story to tell.

We looked again into St. Lucia on our way. The train-
ing squadron was lying outside, and the harbour was covered
with boats full of blue-jackets. The big ships were rolling
heavily. They could have eaten up Rodney's fleet. The
great 'Ville de Paris' would have been a mouthful to the
smallest of them. Man for man officers and crew, were as
good as Rodney ever commanded. Yet, somehow, they
produce small effect on the imagination of the colonists.
The impression is that they are meant more for show than
for serious use. Alas ! the stars and stripes on a Yankee
trader have more to say in the West Indies than the white
ensigns of a fleet of British ironclads.

At Barbadoes there was nothing more for me to do or see.
The English mail was on the point of sailing, and I hastened
on board. One does not realise distance on maps. Jamaica
belongs to the West Indies, and the West Indies are a col-
lective entity. Yet it is removed from the Antilles by the
diameter of the Caribbean Sea, and is farther off than Gib-
raltar from Southampton. Thus it was a voyage of several
days, and I looked about to see who were to be my com-
panions. There were several Spaniards, one or two English
tourists, and some ladies who never left their cabins. The
captain was the most remarkable figure : an elderly man
with one eye lost or injured, the other as peremptory as I
have often seen in a human face ; rough and prickly on the
outside as a pineapple, internally very much resembling the
same fruit, for at the bottom he was true, genuine, and
kindly hearted, very amusing, and intiniateby known to all
travellers on the West Indian line, in the service of which he
had passed forty years of his life. In his own ship he was
sovereign and recognised no superior. Bishops, colonial
governors, presidents of South American republics were, so

The Jamaica Mail Packet. 179

far as their office went, no more to him than other people,
and as long as they were on board were chattels of which he
had temporary charge. Peer and peasant were alike under
his orders, which were absolute as the laws of Medes and
Persians. On the other hand, his eye was quick to see if
there Avas any personal merit in a man, and if you deserved
his respect you would have it. One particular merit he had
which I greatly approved. He kept his cabin to himself, and
did not turn it into a smoking room, as I have known cap-
tains do a great deal too often.

All my own thoughts were fixed upon Jamaica. I had
read so much about it, that my memory was full of persons
and scenes and adventures of which Jamaica was the stage
or subject. Penn and Venables and the Puritan conquest,
and Morgan and the buccaneers ; Port Royal crowded with
Spanish prizes ; its busy dockyards, and English frigates and
privateers fitting out there for glorious or desperate enter-
prises. The name of Jamaica brought them crowding up
with incident on incident ; and behind the history came Tom
Cringle and the wild and reckless, yet wholesome and hearty,
planter's life in Kingston ; the dark figures of the pirates
swinging above the mangroves at Gallows Point; the balls
and parties and the beautiful quadroons, and the laughing,
merry, innocent children of darkness, with the tricks of the
middies upon them. There was the tragic side of it too, in
slavery, the last ugly flash out of the cloud being not two
decades distant in the Eyre and Gordon time. Interest
enough there was about Jamaica, and things would be
sti'angely changed in Kingston if nothing remained of the
society which was once so brilliant. There, if anywhere,
England and English rule were not yet a vanished quantity.
There was a dockyard still, and a commodore in command,
and a guardship and gunboats, and English regiments and
West Indian regiments with English officers. Somo repre-

180 The English in the West Indies.

sentatives, too, I knew were to be found of the old Anglo-
West Indians, men whose fathers and grandfathers were born
in the island, and whose fortunes were bound up in it.
Aaron Bang ! what would not one have given to meet Aaron ?
The real Aaron had been gathered to his fathers, and nature
does not make two such as he was ; but I might fall in with
something that would remind me of him. Paul Gelid and
Pepperpot Wagtail, and Peter Mangrove, better than either
of them — the likeness of these might be surviving, and it
would be delightful to meet and talk to them. They would
give fresh flavour to the immortal ' Log.' Even another Tom
was not impossible ; some middy to develop hereafter into a
frigate captain and to sail again into Port Royal with his
prizes in tow.

Nature at all events could not be changed. The white
rollers would still be breaking on the coral reefs. The palms
would still be waving on the spit which forms the harbour,
and the amber mist would be floating round the peaks of the
Blue Mountains. There were English soldiers and sailors,
and English people. The English language was spoken there
by blacks as well as whites. The religion was English. Our
country went for something, and there would be some per-
sons, at least, to whom the old land was more than a step-
mother, and who were not sighing in their hearts for an-
nexation to the American Union. The governor, Sir Henry
Norman, of Indian fame, I was sorry to learn, was still ab-
sent ; he had gone home on some legal business. Sir Henry
had an Imperial reputation. He had been spoken of to me
in Barbadoes as able, if he were allowed a chance, to act as
Viceroy of all the islands, and to set them on their feet again.
I could well believe that a man of less than Sir Henry's re-
puted power could do it — for in the thing itself there was no
great difficulty — if only we at home were once disenchanted ;
though all the ability in the world would be thrown away as

President Salomon. 181

long as the enchantment continued. I did see Sir Henry, as
it turned out, but only for a few hours.

Our voyage was without remarkable incident; as voyages
are apt to be in these days of powerful steamboats. One
morning there was a tropical rain storm which was worth
seeing. We had a strong awning over the quarter-deck, so
I could stand and watch it. An ink-black cloud came sud-
denly up from the north which seemed to hang into the sea,
the surface of the water below being violently agitated. Ac-
cording to popular belief, the cloud on these occasions is
drawing up water which it afterwards discharges. Were this
so, the water discharged would be salt, which it never is.
The cause of the agitation is a cyclonic rotation of air or
local whirlwind. The most noticeable feature was the black-
ness of the cloud itself. It became so dark that it would
have been difficult to read any ordinary print. The rain,
when it burst, fell not in drops but in torrents. The deck
was flooded, and the scuttle-holes ran like jets from a pump.
The awning was ceasing to be a shelter, for the water was
driven bodily through it ; but the downpour passed off as
suddenly as it had risen. There was no lightning and no
wind. The sea under our side was glassy smooth, and was
dashed into millions of holes by the plunging of the rain
pellets.

The captain in his journeys to and fro had become ac-
quainted with the present black President of Hayti, Mr. Sal-
omon. I had heard of this gentleman as an absolute person,
who knew how to make himself obeyed, and who treated op-
position to his authority in a very summary manner. He
seemed to be a favourite of the captain's. He had been edu-
cated in France, had met with many changes of fortune, and
after an exile in Jamaica had become quasi-king of the black
republic. I much wished to see this paradise of negro lib-
erty ; we were to touch at Jacmel, which is one of the prin-

182 The English in the West Indies.

cipal ports, to leave the mails, and Captain W was good

enough to say that, if I liked, I might go on shore for an hour
or two with the officer in charge.

Hayti, as everyone knows who has studied the black prob-
lem, is the western portion of Columbus's Espanola, or St.
Domingo, the largest after Cuba and the most fertile in nat-
ural resources of all the islands of the Caribbean Sea. It
was the earliest of the Spanish settlements in the New World.
The Spaniards found there a million or two of mild and inno-
cent Indians, whom in their first enthusiasm they intended
to convert to Christianity, and to offer as the first fruits of
their discovery to the Virgin Mary and St. Domenic. The
saint gave his name to the island, and his temperament to
the conquerors. In carrying out their pious design, they
converted the Indians off the face of the earth, working them
to death in their mines and plantations. They filled their
places with blacks from Africa, who proved of tougher con-
stitution. They colonised, they built cities ; they throve
and prospered for nearly two hundred years, when Hayti, the
most valuable half of the island, was taken from them by the
buccaneers and made into a French province. The rest,
which keeps the title of St. Domingo, continued Spanish, and
is Spanish still — a thinly inhabited, miserable, Spanish repub-
lic. Hayti became afterwards the theatre of the exploits of
the ever-glorious Toussaint l'Ouverture. When the French
Kevolution broke out, and Liberty and the Eights of Man be-
came the new gospel, slavery could not be allowed to continue
in the French dominions. The blacks of the colony were
emancipated and were received into the national brotherhood.
In sympathy with the Jacobins of France, who burnt the
chateaux of the nobles and guillotined the owners of them,
the liberated slaves rose as soon as they were free, and mas-
sacred the whole French population, man, woman, and child.
Napoleon sent an army to punish the murderers and recover

The Black Republic. 183

the colony. Toussaint, who had no share in the atrocities,
and whose fault was only that he had been caught by the pre-
vailing political epidemic and believed in the evangel of free,
dom, surrendered and was carried to France, where he died
or else was made an end of. The yellow fever avenged him,
and secured for his countrymen the opportunity of trying out
to the uttermost the experiment of negro self-government.
The French troops perished in tens of thousands. They were
reinforced again and again, but it was like pouring water into
a sieve. The climate won a victory to the black man which
he could not win for himself. They abandoned their enter-
prise at last, and Hayti was free. We English tried our hand
to recover it afterwards, but we failed also, and for the same
reason. i

Hayti has thus for nearly a century been a black independ-
ent state. The negro race have had it to themselves and
have not been interfered with. They were equipped when
they started on their career of freedom with the Catholic re-
ligion, a civilised language, European laws and manners, and
the knowledge of various arts and occupations which they
had learn fc while they were slaves. They speak French still ;
they are nominally Catholics still ; and the tags and rags of
the gold lace of French civilisation continue to cling about
their institutions. But in the heart of them has revived the
old idolatry of the Gold Coast, and in the villages of the in-
terior, where they are out of sight and can follow their in-
stincts, they sacrifice children in the serpent's honour after
the manner of their forefathers. Perhaps nothing better
could be expected from a liberty which was inaugurated by
assassination and plunder. Political changes which prove
successful do not begin in that way.

The Bight of Leogane is a deep bay carved in the side of
the island, one arm of which is a narrow ridge of high moun-
tains a hundred and fifty miles long and from thirty to forty

184 The English in the West Indies.

wide. At the head of this bay, to the north of the ridge, is
Port au Prince, the capital of this remarkable community.
On the south, on the immediately opposite side of the moun-
tains and facing the Caribbean Sea, is Jacmel, the town next
in importance. We arrived off it shortly after daybreak.
The houses, which are white, looked cheerful in the sunlight.
Harbour there was none, but an open roadstead into which
the swell of the sea sets heavily, curling over a long coral
reef, which forms a partial shelter. The mountain range rose
behind, sloping off into rounded woody hills. Here were the
feeding grounds of the herds of wild cattle which tempted
the buccaneers into the island, and from which they took
their name. The shore was abrupt ; the land broke off in
cliffs of coral rock tinted brilliantly with various colours.
One rather striking white cliff, a ship's officer assured me,
was chalk ; adding flint when I looked incredulous. His
geological education was imperfect. We brought up a mile
outside the black city. The boat was lowered. None of the
other passengers volunteered to go with me ; the English are
out of favour in Hayti just now ; the captain discouraged
landings out of mere curiosity ; and, indeed, the officer with
the mails had to reassure himself of Captain W 's con-
sent before he would take me. The presence of Europeans
in any form is barely tolerated. A few only are allowed to
remain about the ports, just as the Irish say they let a few
Danes remain in Dublin and Waterford after the battle of
Clontarf, to attend to the ignoble business of trade.

The country after the green of the Antilles looked brown
and parched. In the large islands the winter months are
dry. As we approached the reef we saw the long hills of
water turn to emerald as they rolled up the shoal, then comb-
ing and breaking in cataracts of snow-white foam. The of-
ficer in charge took me within oar's length of the rock to try
my nerves, and the sea, he did not fail to tell me, swarmed

Jacmel. 185

with sharks of the worst propensities. Two steamers were
lying inside, one of which, belonging to an English company,
had 'happened a misfortune,' and was breaking up as a de-
serted wreck. A Yankee clipper schooner had just come in
with salt fish and crackers — a singularly beautiful vessel,
with immense beam, which would have startled the builders
of the Cowes racers. It was precisely like the schooner which
Tom Cringle commanded before the dockyard martinets had
improved her into ugliness, built on the lines of the old
pirate craft of the islands, when the lives and fortunes of
men hung on the extra speed, or the point which they could
lie closer to the wind. Her return cargo would be coffee
and bananas.

Englishmen move about in Jacmel as if they were ashamed
of themselves among their dusky lords and masters. I ob-
served the Yankee skipper paddling himself off in a canoe
with his broad straw hat and his cigar in his mouth, looking
as if all the world belonged to him, and as if all the world, and
the Hayti blacks in particular, were aware of the fact. The
Yankee, whether we like it or not, is the acknowledged sover-
eign in these waters.

The landing place was, or had been, a jetty built on piles
and boarded over. Half the piles were broken ; the planks
had rotted and fallen through. The swell was rolling home,
and we had to step out quickly as the boat rose on the crest
of the wave. A tattered crowd of negroes were loafing about
variously dressed, none, however, entirely without clothes of
some kind. One of them did kindly give me a hand, observ-
ing that I was less light of foot than once I might have been.
The agent's office was close by. I asked the head clerk — a
Frenchman — to find me a guide through the town. He called
one of the bystanders whom he knew, and we started together,
I and my black companion, to see as much as I could in the
hour which was allowed me. The language was less hopeless

186 The English in the West Indies.

than at Dominica. We found that we could understand each
other — he, me, tolerably ; I, him, in fragments, for his tongue
went as fast as a shuttle. Though it was still barely eight
o'clock the sun was scalding. The streets were filthy and
the stench abominable. The houses were of white stone, and
of some pretensions, but ragged and uninviting — paint no-
where, and the woodwork of the windows and verandahs
mouldy and worm-eaten. The inhabitants swarmed as in a
St. Giles's rookery. I suppose they were all out of doors. If
any were left at home Jacmel must have been as populous as
an African ants' nest. As I had looked for nothing better
than a Kaffir kraal, the degree of civilisation was more than I
expected. I expressed my admiration of the buildings ; my
guide was gratified, and pointed out to me with evident pride
a new hotel or boarding house kept by a Madam Somebody
who was the great lady of the place. Madame Ellememe was
sitting in a shady balcony outside the first floor windows.
She was a large menacing-looking mulatto, like some ogress
of the 'Arabian Nights,' capable of devouring, if she found
them palatable, any number of salt babies. I took off my hat
to this formidable dame, which she did not condescend to
notice, and we passed on. A few houses in the outskirts
stood in gardens with inclosures about them. There is some
trade in the place, and there were evidently families, negro or
European, who lived in less squalid style than the generality.
There was a governor there, nry guide informed me— an
ornamental personage, much respected. To nry question
whether he had any soldiers, I was answered ' No ; ' the Hayti-
ans didn't like soldiers. I was to understand, however, that
they were not common blacks. They aspired to be a common-
wealth with public rights and alliances. Hayti a republic,
France a republic : France and Hayti good friends now.
They had a French bishop and French priests and a French
currency. In spite of their land laws, they were proud of

Jacmel. 1ST

their affinity with the great nation ; and I heard afterwards,
though not from my Jacmel companion, that the better part
of the Haytians would welcome back the French dominion if
they were not afraid that the Yankees would disapprove.

My guide persisted in leading me outside the town, and
as my time was limited, I tried in various ways to induce
him to take me back into it. He maintained, however, that
he had been told to show me whatever was most interesting,
and I found that I was to see an American windmill-pump
which had been just erected to supply Jacmel with fresh
water. It was the first that had been seen in the island, and
was a wonder of wonders. Doubtless it implied ' progress,'
and would assist in the much-needed ablution of the streets
and kennels. I looked at it and admired, and having thus
done homage, I was allowed my own way.

It was market day. The Yankee cargo had been un-
loaded, and a great open space in front of the cathedral was
covered with stalls or else blankets stretched on poles to keep
the sun off, where hundreds of Haytian dames were sitting
or standing disposing of their wares — piles of salt fish, piles
of coloured calicoes, knives, scissors, combs, and brushes.
Of home produce there were great baskets of loaves, fruit,
vegetables, and butcher's meat on slabs. I looked inquisi-
tively at these last ; but I acknowledge that I saw no joints
of suspicious appearance. Children were running about in
thousands, not the least as if they were in fear of being sacri-
ficed, and babies hung upon their mothers as if natural affec-
tion existed in Jacmel as much as in other places. I asked
no compromising cpiestions, not wishing to be torn in pieces.
Sir Spencer St. John's book has been heard of in Hayti, and
the anger about it is considerable. The scene was interest-
ing enough, but the smell was unendurable. The wild Afri-
can black is not filthy in his natural state. He washes much,
and, as wild animals do, at least tries to keep himself clear

1S8 The English in the West Indies.

of vermin. The blacks in Jacmel appeared (like the same
animals as soon as they are domesticated) to lose the sense
which belongs to them in their wild condition. My preju-
] dices, if I have any, had not blinded me to the good qualities
of the men and women in Dominica. I do not think it was
prejudice wholly which made me think the faces which I saw
in Hayti the most repulsive which I had ever seen in the
world, or Jacmel itself, taken for all in all, the foulest, dirti-
est, and nastiest of human habitations. The dirt, however, I
will do them the justice to say did not seem to extend to their
churches. The cathedral stood at the upper end of the mar-
ket place. I went in. It was airy, cool, and decent-looking.
Some priests were saying mass, and there was a fairly large
congregation. I wished to get a nearer sight of the altar
and the images and pictures, imagining that in Hayti the
sacred persons might assume a darker colour than in
Europe ; but I could not reach the chancel without disturb-
ing people who were saying their prayers, and, to the dis-
appointment of my companion, who beckoned me on, and
would have cleared a way for me, I controlled my curiosity
and withdrew.

My hour's leave of absence was expired. I made my way
back to the landing place, where the mail steamer's boat was
waiting for me. On the steamer herself the passengers were
waiting impatiently for breakfast, which had been put off on
our account. We hurried on board at our best speed ; but
before breakfast could be thought of, or any other thing, I
had to strip and j>lunge into a bath and wash away the odour
of the great negro republic of the West which clung to my
clothes and skin.

Leaving Jacmel and its associations, we ran all day along
the land, skirting a range of splendid mountains between
seven and eight thousand feet high ; past the Isle a Vache ;
past the bay of Cayes, once famous as the haunt of the sea-

A Jamaica Planter. 189

rovers ; past Cape Tubiron, the Cape of Sharks. At evening
we were in the channel which divides St. Domingo from

Jamaica. Captain insisted to me that this was the

scene of Rodney's action, and he pointed out to me the head-
land under which the British fleet had been lying. He was
probably right in saying that it was the scene of some action
of Rodney's, for there is hardly a corner of the West Indies
where he did not leave behind him the print of his cannon
shot ; but it was not the scene of the great fight which saved
the British Empire. That was below the cliffs of Dominica ;
and Captain W , as many others have done, was con-
founding Dominica with St. Domingo.

The next morning we were to anchor at Port Royal. We
had a Jamaica gentleman of some consequence on board. I
had failed so far to make acquaintance with him, but on this
last evening he joined me on deck, and I gladly used the
opportunity to learn something of the present condition of
things. I was mistaken in expecting to find a more vigorous
or more sanguine tone of feeling than I had left at the An-
tilles. There was the same despondency, the same sense
that their state was hopeless, and that nothing which they
could themselves do would mend it. He himself, for in-
stance, was the owner of a large sugar estate which a few
years ago was worth 60,000?. It was not encumbered. He
was his own manager, and had spared no cost in providing
the newest machinery. Yet, with the present prices and with
the refusal of the American Commercial Treaty, it would not
pay the expense of cultivation. He held on, for it was all
that he could do. To sell was impossible, for no one would
buy even at the price of the stock on the land. It was the
same story which I had heard everywhere. The expenses of
the administration, this gentleman said, were out of all pro-
portion to the resources of the island, and were yearly in-
creasing. The planters had governed in the old days as the

190 The English in the West Indies.

English landlords had governed Ireland. They had gov-
erned cheaply and on their own resources. They had author-
ity ; they were respected ; their word was law. Now their
power had been taken from them, and made over to paid
officials, and the expense was double what it used to be.
Between the demands made on them in the form of taxation
and the fall in the value of their produce their backs were
breaking, and the ' landed interest ' would come to an end.
I asked him, as I had asked many persons without getting a
satisfactory answer, what he thought that the Imperial Gov-
ernment could do to mend matters. He seemed to think
that it was too late to do anything. The blacks were in-
creasing so fast, and the white influence was diminishing so
fast, that Jamaica in a few years would be another Hayti.

In this gentleman, too, I found to my sorrow that there
was the same longing for admission to the American Union
which I had left behind me at the Antilles. In spite of
soldiers and the naval station, the old country was still
looked upon as a stepmother, and of genuine loyalty there
was, according to him, little or nothing. If the West Indies
were ever to become prosperous again, it could only be when
they were annexed to the United States. For the present, at
least, he admitted that annexation was impossible. Not on
account of any possible objection on the part of the British
Government ; it seems to be assumed by every one that the
British Government cares nothing what they do ; nor wholly
on account of the objections of the Americans, though he
admitted that the Americans were unwilling to receive them ;
but because in the existing state of feeling such a change
could not be carried out without civil war. In Jamaica, at
least, the blacks and mulatoes would resist. There were
nearly 700,000 of them, while of the whites there were but
15,000, and the relative numbers were eveiw year becoming-
more unfavourable. The blacks knew that under England

Jamaican Prospects. 191

they had nothing to fear. They would have everything more
and more their own way, and in a short time they expected
to have the island to themselves. They might collect arms ;
they might do what they pleased, and no English officer
dared to use rough measures with them ; while, if they be-
longed to the Union, the whites would recover authority one
way or another. The Americans were ready with their rifles
on occasions of disorder, and their own countrymen did not
call them to account for it as we did. The blacks, therefore,
preferred the liberty which they had and the prospects to
which they looked forward, and they and the mulattoes also
would fight, and fight desperately, before they would allow
themselves to be made American citizens.

The prospect which Sir. laid before me was not a

beautiful one, and was coming a step nearer at each advance
that was made in the direction of constitutional self-govern-
ment ; for, like every other person with whom I spoke on the
subject, he said emphatically that Europeans would not re-
main to be ruled under a black representative system ; nor
would they take any part in it when they would be so over-
whelmingly outvoted and outnumbered. They would sooner
forfeit all that they had in the world and go away. An effective
and economical administration on the Indian pattern might
have saved all a few years ago. It was too late now, and Ja-
maica was past recovery. At this rate it was a sadly altered
Jamaica since Tom Cringle's time, though his friend Aaron
even then had seen what was probably coming. But I could

not accept entirely all that Mr. had been saying, and

had to discount the natural irritation of a man who sees his
fortune sliding out of his hands. Moreover, for myself, I
never listen much to a desponding person. Even when a
cause is lost utterly, and no rational hope remains, I would
still go down, if it had to be so, with my spirit unbroken arid
my face to the enemy. Mr. perhaps would recover heart

192 The English in the West Indies.

if the price of sugar mended a little. For my own part, I do
not care much whether it mends or not. The economics of
the islands ought not to depend exclusively on any single
article of produce. I believe, too, in spite of gloomy prog-
nostics, that a loyal and prosperous Jamaica is still among
the possibilities of the future, if we will but study in earnest

the character of the problem. Mr. , however, did most

really convey to me the convictions of a large and influential
body of West Indians — convictions on which they are already
acting, and will act more and more. With Hayti so close,
and with opinion in England indifferent to what becomes of
them, they will clear out while they have something left to
lose, and will not wait till ruin is upon them, or till they are
ordered off the land by a black legislature. There is a saying
in Hayti that the white man has no rights which the blacks
are bound to recognise.

I walked forward after Ave had done talking. We had five
hundred of the poor creatures on board on their way to the
Darien pandemonium. The vessel was rolling with a heavy
beam sea. I found the whole mass of them reduced into the
condition of the pigs who used to occupy the foredeck in the
Cork and Bristol packets. They were lying in a confused
heap together, helpless, miserable, without consciousness ap-
parently, save a sense in each that he was wretched. Unfor-
tunate brothers-in-law ! following the laws of political econ-
omy, and carrying their labour to the dearest market, where,
before a year was out, half of them were to die. They had
souls, too, some of them, and honest and kindly hearts. I
observed one man who was suffering less than the rest read-
ing aloud to a prostrate group a chapter of the New Testa-
ment ; another was reading to himself a French Catholic
book of devotion.

The dawn was breaking in the east when I came on deck
in the morning". The Blue Mountains were hanqinq- over us

Kingston. 193

ou our right hand, the peaks buried in white mist which the
uurisen sun was faintly tinting with orange. We had passed
Morant Bay, the scene of Gordon's rash attempt to imitate
Toussaint l'Ouverture. As so often in the Antilles, a level
plain stretched between the sea and the base of the hills,
formed by the debris washed down by the rivers in the rainy
season. Among cane fields and cocoa-nut groves we saw
houses and the chimneys of the sugar factories ; and, as we
came nearer, we saw men and horses going to their early
work. Presently Kingston itself came in sight, and Up Park
Camp, and the white barracks high up on the mountain side,
of which one had read and heard so much. Here was act-
ually Tom Cringle's Kingston, and between us and the town
was the long sand spit which incloses the lagoon at the head
of which it is built. How this natural breakwater had been de-
posited I could find no one to tell me. It is eight miles long,
rising but a few feet above the water-line, in places not more
than thirty yards across — nowhere, except at the extremity,
more than sixty or a hundred. The thundering swell of the
Caribbean Sea breaks upon it from year's end to year's end,
and never washes it any thinner. Where the sand is dry, be-
yond the reach of the waves, it is planted thickly all along
with palms, and ajypears from the sea a soft green line, over
which appear the masts and spars of the vessels at anchor in
the harbour, and the higher houses of Kingston itself. To
reach the opening into the lagoon you have to run on to the
end of the sandbank, where there is a peninsula on which is
built the Port Royal so famous in West Indian story. Half-
way down among the palms the lighthouse stands, from which
a gun was fired as we passed, to give notice that the English
mail was coming in. Treacherous coral reefs rise out of the
deep water for several miles, some under water and visible
only by the breakers over them, others forming into low
wooded islands. Only local pilots can take a ship safely
13

194 The English in the West ladies.

through these powerful natural defence works. There are
but two channels through which the lagoon can be ap-
proached. The eastern passage, along which we were steam-
ing, runs so near the shore that an enemy's ship would be
destroyed by the batteries among the sandhills long before it
could reach the mouth. The western passage is less intricate,
but that also is commanded by powerful forts. In old times
Kingston was unattackable, so strong had the position been
made by nature and art combined. It could be shelled now
over the spit from the open sea. It might be destroyed, but
even so could not easily be taken.

I do not know that I have ever seen any scene moi*e inter-
esting than that which broke upon my eyes as we rounded
the point, and the lagoon opened out before me. Kingston,
which we had passed half an hour before, lay sis miles off at
the head of it, now inside the sand ridge, blue and hazy in
the distance. At the back were the mountains. The mist
had melted off, standing in shadowy grey masses with the
sun rising behind them. Immediately in front were the
dockyards, forts, and towers of Port Royal, with the guard-
ship, gunboats, and tenders, with street and terrace, roof and
turret and glistening vane, all clearly and sharply defined in
the exquisite transparency of the air. The associations of
the place no doubt added to the impression. Before the first
hut was run up in Kingston, Port Royal was the rendezvous
of all English ships which, for spoil or commerce, frequented
the West Indian seas. Here the buccaneers sold their plun-
der and squandered their gains in gambling and riot. Here
in the later century of legitimate wars, whole fleets were
gathered to take in stores, or refit when shattered by engage-
ments. Here Nelson had been, and Colli ngwood and Jervis,
and all our other naval heroes. Here prizes were brought in
for adjudication, and pirates to be tried and hanged. In this
spot more than in any other, beyond Great Britain herself,

■. i !«/„*;.

fg

*l?»

i«;«

Port Royal. 195

the energy of the Empire once was throbbing. The ' Urgent,'
an old two-decker, and three gunboats were all that were now
floating in the once crowded water ; the ' Urgent,' no longer
equipped for active service, imperfectly armed, inadequately
manned, but still flaunting the broad white ensign, and
grand with the houses which lay behind her. There were
batteries at the point, and batteries on the opposite shore.
The morning bugle rang out clear and inspiriting from the
town, and white coats and gold and silver lace glanced in and
out as men and officers were passing to parade. Here, at
any rate, England was still alive.

The channel at the entrance is a mile in width. The lagoon
(the open part of it) may be seven or eight miles long and
half as many broad. It forms the mouth of the Cobre river,
one of the largest in Jamaica, on which, ten miles up, stands
the original seat of government established by the Spaniards,
and called after them Spanish Town. The fashion of past
times, as old as the times of Thucydides, and continued on
till the end of the last century, was to choose the sites for
important towns in estuaries, at a distance from the sea, to be
out of the reach of pirates. The Cobre, running down from
Spanish Towm, turns the plain through which it flows into a
swamp. The swamp covers itself with mangroves, and the
mangroves fringe the shore of the lagoon itself for two-thirds
of its circuit. As Jamaica grew in wealth and population the
trade was carried from Port Royal deeper into the bay. An-
other town sprang up there, called King's Town, or shortly
'Kingston.' The administration was removed thither for
convenience, and though fallen away from its old conse-
quence, Kingston, with its extended suburbs, its churches
and warehouses, and large mansions overhung with trees,
looks at a distance like a place of consideration. Many
ships lay along the wharves, or anchored a few cables' dis-
tance off. Among them were a couple of Spanish frigates,

196 The English in the West Indies.

which remain there in permanence on the watch for refu-
gees from Cuba. On the slopes behind the town, as far as
eye could see, were the once splendid estates of the sugar
princes of the last century. One of them was pointed out
to me as the West Indian home of the author of, 'Tom
Cringle.'

We had to stop for a few minutes as the officer of the port
came alongside for the mails. We then went on at reduced
speed. The lagoon is generally shoal. A deep water chan-
nel runs along the side of it which is farthest from the sea ;
made, I suppose, by the river, for as usual there is little tide
or none. Halfway up we passed under the walls of Fort
Augusta, now a ruin and almost deserted, but once mounting
a hundred guns. The money which we spent on the defence
of Jamaica in the old times was not always laid out wisely, as
will be seen in an account which I shall have to give of this
remarkable structure ; but, at any rate, we were lavish of it.

Of the sharks with which the water used to swarm we saw
none. Port Royal Jack and his kindred are said to have dis-
appeared, driven or frightened out by the screws of the
steamers. But it is not a place which I should choose for a
swim. Nor did the nigger boys seem as anxious as I had
seen them in other spots to dive for sixpences under the
ship's side.

No account is made of days when you come into port after
a voyage. Cargoes have to be landed, or coal has to be taken
in. The donkey engines are at work, hoisting packing cases
and luggage out of the hold. Stewards run to and fro, and
state-room doors are opened, and busy figures are seen
through each, stuffing their portmanteaus and preparing for
departure. The church bells at Kingston, ringing for early
service, reminded me that it was Sunday. We brought up
at a jetty, and I cannot say that, close at hand, the town was
as atti'active as it had appeared when first I saw it. The en-

Kingston Harbour. 197

chantment was gone. The blue haze of distance gave place to
reality. The water was so fetid under the ship's sides that it
could not be pumped into the baths. Odours, not Arabian,
from open drains reminded me of Jacmel. The streets, up
which I could see from the afterdeck, looked dirty and the
houses shabby. Docks and wharves, however, are never the
brightest part of any town, English or foreign. There were
people enough at any rate, and white faces enough among
them. Gangways were rigged from the ship to the shore,
and ladies and gentlemen rushed on board to meet their
friends. The companies' agents appeared in the captain's
cabin. Porters were scrambling for luggage ; pushing, shov-
ing, and swearing. Passengers who had come out with us,
and had never missed attendance at the breakfast table, were
hurrying home unbreakfasted to their wives and families.
My own plans were uncertain. I had no friends, not even an
acquaintance. I knew nothing of the hotels and lodging-
houses, save that they had generally a doubtful reputation.
I had brought with me a letter of introduction to Sir H.
Norman, the governor, but Sir Henry had gone to England.
On the whole, I thought it best to inclose the letter to Mr.
"Walker, the Colonial Secretary, who I understood was in
Kingston, with a note asking for advice. This I sent by a
messenger. Meanwhile I stayed on board to look about me
from the deck. The ship was to go on the next morning to
the canal works at Darien. Time was precious. Immediately
on arriving she had begun to take in coal, Sunday though it
might be, and a singular spectacle it was. The coal yard was
close by, and some hundreds of negroes, women and men, but\
women in four times the number, were hard at work. The
entire process was by hand and basket, each basket holding
from eighty to a hundred pounds weight. Two planks were
laid down at a steep incline from the ship's deck to the yard.
Swinging their loads on their heads, erect as statues, and

198 The English in the West Indies.

with a step elastic as a racehorse's, they marched up one of
the planks, emptied their baskets into the coal bunkers, and
ran down the other. Bound and round they went under the
blazing sun all the morning through, and round arid round
they would continue to go all the afternoon. The men took
it comparatively easy. The women flew along, laughing, and
clamouring, as if not knowing what weariness was — willing
beasts of burden, for they had the care upon them of their
children ; the men disclaiming all responsibilities on that
score, after the babies have been once brought into the world.
The poor women are content with the arrangement, which
they prefer to what they would regard as legal bondage.
They earn at this coaling work seven or eight shillings a day.
If they were wives, their husbands would take it from them
and spend it in rum. The companion who is not a wife can
refuse and keep her earnings for her little ones. If black
suffrage is to be the rule in Jamaica, I would take it away
from the men and would give it to the superior sex. The
women are the working bees of the hive. They would make
a tolerable nation of black amazons, and the babies would not
be offered to Jumbi.

When I had finished my meditations on the coaling women,
there were other black creatures to wonder at ; great boobies
or pelicans, old acquaintances of the Zoological Gardens, who
act as scavengers in these waters. We had perhaps a couple
of dozen of them round us as large as vultures, ponderous
and sleepy to look at when squatting on rocks or piles, over-
weighted by their enormous bills. On the wing they were
astonishingly swift, wheeling in circles, till they could fix
their prey with their eyes, then pouncing upon it with a
violent slanting plunge. I suppose their beaks might be
broken if they struck directly, but I never saw one miss its
aim. Nor do they ever go below the surface, but seize always
what is close to it. I was told — I do not know how truly —

A West Indian Breakfast. 199

that like the diablots in Dominica, they nest in the mountains
and only come down to the sea to feed.

Hearing that I was in search of quarters, a Miss Burton, a
handsome mulatto woman, came up and introduced herself to
me. Hotels in the English West Indies are generally detest-
able. This dame had set up a boarding house on improved
principles, or rather two boarding houses, between which she
invited me to take my choice, one in the suburbs of King-
ston, one on the bank of a river in a rocky gorge in the Blue
Mountains. In either of these she promised that she would
make me happy, and I do not doubt tbat she would have suc-
ceeded, for her fame had spread through all Jamaica, and her
face was as merry as it was honest. As it turned out I was
provided for elsewhere, and I lost the chance of making an
acquaintance which I should have valued. When she spoke
to me she seemed a very model of vigour and health. She
died suddenly while I was in the island.

It was still early. When the vessel was in some order
again, and those who were going on shore had disappeared,
the rest of us were called down to breakfast to taste some of
those Jamaica delicacies on which Paul Gelid was so elo-
quent. The fruit was the chief attraction : pineapples, of
which one can eat as much as one likes in these countries
with immunity from after suffering ; oranges, more excellent
than even those of Grenada and Dominica ; shaddocks, ad-
mirable as that memorable one which seduced Adam ; and
for the first time mangoes, the famous Number Eleven of
which I had heard such high report, and was now to taste.
The English gardeners can do much, but they cannot ripen a
Number Eleven, and it is too delicate to bear carriage. It
must be eaten in the tropics or nowhere. The mango is the
size and shape of a swan's egg, of a ruddy yellow colour when
ripe, and in flavour like an exceptionally good apricot, with a
very slight intimation of resin. The stone is disproportion-

200 The English in the West Indies.

ately large. The flesh adheres to it, and one abandons as
hopeless the attempt to eat mangoes with clean lips and fin-
gers. The epicures insist that they should be eaten only in
a bath.

The heat was considerable, and the feast of fruit was the
more welcome. Soon after the Colonial Secretary politely
answered my note in person. In the absence of the governor
of a colony, the colonial secretary, as a rule, takes his place.
In Jamaica, and wherever we have a garrison, the commander
of the forces becomes acting governor ; I suppose because it
is not convenient to place an officer of high military rank
under the orders of a civilian who is not the direct represent-
ative of the sovereign. In the gentleman who now called on
me I found an old acquaintance whom I had known as a boy
many years ago. He told me that, if I had made no other

arrangements, Colonel J , who was the present chief, was

expecting me to be his guest at the ' King's House ' during
my stay in Jamaica. My reluctance to trespass on the hospi-
tality of an entire stranger was not to be allowed. Soldiers
who have distinguished themselves are, next to lawyers, the
most agreeable people to be met with, and when I was con-
vinced that I should really be welcome, I had no other objec-
tion. An aide-de-camp, I was told, would call for me in the
afternoon. Meanwhile the secretary stayed with me for an
hour or two, and I was able to learn something authentic
from him as to the general condition of things. I had not
given entire credit to the representations of my planter friend
of the evening before. Mr. Walker took a more cheerful
view, and, although the prospects were not as bright as they
might be, he saw no reason for despondency. Sugar was\
down of course. The public debt had increased, and taxa- 1
tion was heavy. Many gentlemen in Jamaica, as in the An-
tilles, were selling, or trying to sell, their estates and go out /
of it. On the other hand, expenses of government were be-

The Colonial Secretary. 201

ing reduced, and the revenue showed a surplus. The fruit
trade with the United States was growing, and promised to
grow still further. American capitalists had come into the
island, and were experimenting on various industries. The
sugar treaty with America would naturally have been wel-
come ; but Jamaica was less dependent on its sugar crop, and
the action of the British Government was less keenly re-
sented. In the Antilles, the Colonial Secretary admitted,
there might be a desire for annexation to the United States,
and Jamaican landowners had certainly expressed the same
wish to myself. ' Mr. "Walker, however, assured me that, while
the blacks would oppose it unanimously, the feeling, if it
existed at all among the whites, was confined as yet to a very
few persons. They had been English for 230 years, and the
large majority of them wished to remain English. There
had been suffering among them ; but there had been suffer-
ing in other places besides Jamaica. Better times might per-
haps be coming with the opening of the Darien canal, when
Kingston might hope to become again the centre of a trade.
Of the negroes, both men and women, Mr. Walker spoke ex-
tremely favourably. They were far less indolent than they
were supposed to be ; they were settling on the waste lands,
acquiring property, growing yams and oranges, and harming
rjo one ; they had no grievance left ; they knew it, and were
perfectly contented.

As Mr. "Walker was an official, I did not ask him about the
working of the recent changes in the constitution ; nor could
he have properly answered me if I had. The state of things
is briefly this : Jamaica, after the first settlement, received a
parliamentary form of government, modelled on that of Ire-
land, the colonial liberties being restricted b}r a law analo-
gous to Poynings' Act. The legislature, so constructed, of
course represented the white interest only and Avas entirely
composed of whites. It remained substantially unaltered i ill

202 The English in the West Indies.

1853, when modifications were made which admitted coloured
men to the suffrage, though with so high a franchise as to be
almost exclusive. It became generally felt that the franchise
would have to be extended. A popular movement, led by
Mr. Gordon, who was a member of the legislature, developed
into a riot, into bloodshed and panic. Gordon was hanged
by a court-martial, and the assembly, aware that, if allowed
to exist any longer, it could exist only with the broad ad-
mission of the negro vote, pronounced its own dissolution,
surrendered its powers to the Crown, and represented for-
mally 'that nothing but a strong government could prevent
the island from lapsing into the condition of Hayti.'
/ The surrender was accepted. Jamaica was administered
' till within the last three years by a governor, officials, and
council, all nominated by the Queen. No dissatisfaction had
been expressed, and the blacks at least had enjoyed a pros-
perity and tranquillity which had been unbroken by a single
disturbance. If the island has suffered, it has suffered from
causes with which political dissatisfaction has had nothing to
do, and which, therefore, political changes cannot remove,
i In 1884 Mr. Gladstone's Government, for reasons which I
have not been able to ascertain, revived suddenly the repre-
sentative system ; constructed a council composed equally of
nominated and of elected members, and placed the franchise
so low as to include practically every negro peasant who pos-
sessed a hut and a garden. So long as the Crown retains and
exercises its power of nomination, no worse results can ensue
than the inevitable discontent when the votes of the elected
members are disregarded or overborne. But to have vent-
ured so important an alteration with the intention of leaving
it without further extension would have been an act of gra-
tuitous folly, of which it would be impossible to imagine an
English cabinet to have been capable. It is therefore as-
sumed and understood to have been no more than an initial

Jamaican Constitution. 203

I step towards passing on the management of Jamaica to the
black constituencies. It has been so construed in the other
islands, and. was the occasion of the agitation in Trinidad
which I observed when I was there.

My own opinion as to the wisdom of such an experiment
matters little : but I have a right to say that neither blacks
nor whites have asked for it ; that no one who knows any-
thing of the "West Indies and wishes them to remain English
sincerely asked for it ; that no one agitated for it save a few
| newspaper writers and mulattoes whom it would raise into
I consequence. If tried at all, it will be tried either with a
deliberate intention of cutting Jamaica free from us alto-
gether, or else in deference to English political superstitions,
which attribute supernatural virtues to the exercise of the
| franchise, and assume that a form of self-government which
i suits us tolerably at home will be equally beneficial in all
countries and under all conditions.

CHAPTER Xni

The English mai's — Irish agitation — Two kinds of colonies — Indian ad.
ministration — How far applicable in the West Indies — Land at Kings-
ton— Government House — Dinnerparty — Interesting officer — Majuba
Hill — Mountain station— Kingston curiosities — Tobacco— Valley in
the Blue Mountains.

I am reminded as I write of an adventure which befell Arch-
bishop "Whately soon after his promotion to the see of Dublin.
On arriving in Ireland he saw that the people were miser-
able. The cause, in his mind, was their ignorance of po-
litical economy, of which he had himself written what he re-
garded as an excellent manual. An Irish translation of this
manual he conceived would be the best possible medicine,
and he commissioned a native Scripture reader to make one.
To insure correctness he required the reader to retranslate to
him what he had written line by line. He observed that the
man as he read turned sometimes two pages at a time. The
text went on correctly, but his quick eye perceived that some-
thing was written on the intervening leaves. He insisted on
knowing what it was, and at last extorted an explanation,
'Your Grace, me and my comrade conceived that it was
mighty dry reading, so we have just interposed now and then
a bit of a pawem, to help it forward, your Grace.' I am my-
self imitating the translators, and making sandwiches out of
politics and local descriptions.

We had brought the English mails with us. There were
letters to read which had been in the ship with us, though
out of our reach. There were the newspapers to read.

Letter's from, England. 205

They told me nothing but the weary round of Irish outrages
and the rival remedies of Tory or Radical politicians "who
cared for Ireland less than I did, and considered only how to
trim their sails to keep in office or to get it. How sick one
is of all that ! Half-a-dozen times at least in Anglo-Irish his-
tory things have come to the same point. ' All Ireland can-
not govern the Earl of Kildare,' said some one in Henry VIH.'s
privy council. Then answered Wolsey, in the tone of Mr.
Gladstone, ' Let the Earl of Kildare govern all Ireland.'
Elizabeth wished to conciliate. Shan O'Neil, Desmond, Ty-
rone promised in turn to rule Ireland in loyal union with
England under Irish ideas. Lord Grey, who was for ' a Ma-
hometan conquest, ' was censured and 'girded at:' yet the
end was always broken heads. From 1641 to 1619 an Irish
parliament sat at Kilkenny, and Charles I. and the Tories
dreamt of an alliance between Irish popery and English loy-
alism. Charles lost his head, and Cromwell had to make an
end of Irish self-government at Drogheda and Wexford. Tyr-
connell and James II. were to repeal the Act of Settlement
and restore the forfeited lands to the old owners. The end
of that came at the Boyne and at Aghrim. Grattan would
remake the Irish nation. The English Liberals sent Lord
Fitzwilliam to help him, and the Saxon mastiff and the Celtic
wolf were to live as brothers evermore. The result has been
always the same ; the wretched country inflated with a dream
of independence, and then trampled into mud again. So it
has been. So it will be again. Ireland cannot be independ-
ent, for England is stronger than she, and cannot permit it.
Yet nothing less will satisfy her. And so there has been
always a weary round of fruitless concessions leading to de-
mands which cannot be gratified, and in the end we are
driven back upon force, which the miserable people lack the
courage to encounter like :nen. Mr. Gladstone's experiment
differs only from its antecedents because in the past the Eng-

206 The English in the West Indies.

lish friends of Irish liberty had a real hope that a reconcilia-
tion was possible. They believed in what they were trying
to do. The present enterprise is the creation of parliament-
ary faction. I have never met any person acquainted with
the minds and motives of the public men of the day who
would not confess to me that, if it had suited the interests of
the leaders of the present Radical party to adopt the Irish
policy of the Long Parliament, their energy and their elo-
quence would have been equally at the service of the Protest-
ant ascendency, which they have now denounced as a upas
tree. They even ask you with wide eyes what else you
would expect ?

Mr. Sexton says that if England means to govern Ireland
she must keep an army there as large as she keeps in India.
England could govern Ireland in perfect peace, without an
army at all, if there was no faction in the House of Commons.
Either party government will destroy the British Empire, or
the British nation will make an end of party government on
its present lines. There are sounds in the air like the cracking
of the ice of the Neva at the incoming of spring, as if a nobler
spirit was at last awaking in us. In a few more years there
may be no more Radicals and no more Conservatives, and the
nation will be all in all.

Here is the answer to the question so often asked, What is
the use of the colonies to us ? The colonies are a hundred-
fold multiplication of the area of our own limited islands.
In taking possession of so large a portion of the globe, we
have enabled ourselves to spread and increase and carry our-
selves, our language and our liberties, into all climates and
continents. We overflow at home ; there are too many of us
here already ; and if no lands belonged to us but Great Britain
and Ireland, we should become a small insignificant power
beside the mighty nations which are forming around us.
There is space for hundreds of millions of us in the terri-

The Use of Colonies. 207

tories of which we and our fathers have possessed ourselves.
In Canada, Australia, New Zealand we add to our numbers
and our resources. There are so many more Englishmen in
the world able to hold their own against the mightiest of
their rivals. Andjwje have another function, such as the Ro-
mans had. The sections of men on this globe are unequally
gifted. Some are strong and can govern themselves ; some
are weak and are the prey of foreign invaders or internal
anarchy ; and freedom, which all desire, is only attainable by
weak nations when they are subject to the rule of others who
are at once powerful and just. This was the duty which fell
to the Latin race two thousand years ago. In these modern
times~it has fallen to ours, and in the discharge of it the
highest features in the English character have displayed them-
selves. , Circumstances forced on us the conquest of India ;
we have given India in return internal peace undisturbed by
tribal quarrels or the ambitions of dangerous neighbours, with
a law which deals out right to high and low among 250,000,
000 human beings.

Never have rulers been less self-seeking than we have been
in our Asiatic empire. No ' lex de repetundis ' has been
needed to punish avaricious proconsuls who had fattened
on the provinces. In such positions the English show at
their best, and do their best. India has been the training
school of our greatest soldiers and greatest administrators.
Strike off the Anglo-Indian names from the roll of famous
Englishmen, and we shall lose the most illustrious of them
all.

In India the rule of England has been an unexampled suc-
cess, glorious to ourselves and of infinite benefit to our sub-
jects, because we have been upright and disinterested, and
have tried sincerely and honourably to do our duty. In other
countries belonging to us, where with the same methods we
night have produced the same results, we have applied thtm

208 The English in the West Indies.

with a hesitating and less clean hand. We planted Ireland as
a colony with our own people, we gave them a parliament of
their own, and set them to govern the native Irish for us,
instead of doing it ourselves, to save appearances and to save
trouble. We have not failed altogether. All the good that
has been done at all in that poor island has been clone by the
Anglo-Irish landlords. But it has not been much, as the pres-
ent condition of things shows. In the West Indies similarly
the first settlers carried with them their English institutions.
They were themselves a handful. The bulk of the population
were slaves, and as long as slavery continued those institu-
tions continued to work tolerably in the interest of the white
race. When the slaves were emancipated, the distinction of
colour done away with, and the black multitude and their
\white employers made equal before the law and equally priv-
ileged, constitutional government became no longer adapted to
the new conditions. The white minority could not be trusted
with the exclusive possession of political power. The blacks
could not be trusted, with the equally dangerous supremacy
which their numbers would insure them. Our duty, if we did
not and do not mean to abandon them altogether, has been
to govern both with the same equity with which we govern at
Calcutta. If you choose to take a race like the Irish or like
the negroes whom you have forced into an unwilling subjec-
tion and have not treated when in that condition w7ith per-
fect justice — if you take such a race, strike the fetters off them,
and arm them at once with all the powers and privileges of
loyal citizens, you ought not to be surprised if they attribute
your concessions to fear, and if they turn again and rend you.
When we are brought in contact with races of men who are
not strong enough or brave enough to defend their own iu-
dependence, and whom our own safety cannot allow to fall
uuder any other power, our right and our duty is to govern
such races and to govern them well, or they will have a right

Meditations on Government. 209

in turn to cut our throats. This is our mission. When we
have dared to act up to it we have succeeded magnificently ;
we have failed when we have paltered and trifled ; and we
shall fail again, and the great empire on which the sun never
sets will be shattered to atoms, if we refuse to look facts in
the face.

From these meditations, suggested by the batch of news-
papers which I had been studying, I was roused by the ar-
rival of the promised aide-de-camp, a good-looking and good-
humoured young officer in white uniform (they all wear white
in the tropics), who had brought the governor's carriage for
me. Government House, or King's House, as it is called,
answering to a ' Queen's House ' in Barbadoes, is five miles
from Kingston, on the slope which gradually ascends from
the sea to the mountains. We drove through the town, which
did not improve on closer acquaintance. The houses which
front towards the streets are generally insignificant. The
better sort, being behind walls or overhung with trees, were
imperfectly visible. The roads were deep in white dust,
which flies everywhere in whirling clouds from the unceasing
wind. It was the dry season. The rains are not constant in
Jamaica, as they are in the Antilles. The fields and the sides
of the mountains were bare and brown and parched. The
blacks, however, were about in crowds in their Sunday
finery. Being in a British island, we had got back into the'
white calicoes and ostrich plumes, and I missed the grace of
the women at Dominica ; but men and women seemed as if
they had not a care in the world. We passed Up Park Camp
and the cantonments of the West India regiments, and then
through a ' scrub ' of dwarf acacia and blue-flowered lignum
vitae. Handsome villas were spread along the road with lawns
and gardens, and the road itself was as excellent as those in
Barbadoes. Half an hours drive brought us to the lodge,
and through the park to the King's House itself, which
14

210 The English in the West Indies.

stands among groups of fine trees four hundred feet above
the sea.

All the large houses in Jamaica — and this was one of the
largest of them — are like those in Barbadoes, with the type
more completely developed, generally square, built of stone,
standing on blocks, hollow underneath for circulation of air,
and approached by a broad flight of steps. On the three
sides which the sun touches, deep verandahs or balconies are
thrown out on the first and second floors, closed in front by
green blinds, which can be shut either completely or par-
tially, so that at a distance they look like houses of cards or
great green boxes, made pretty by the trees which shelter
them or the creepers which climb over them. Behind the
blinds run long airy darkened galleries, and into these the
sitting rooms open, which are of course still darker with a
subdued green light, in which, till you are used to it, you can
hardly read. The floors are black, smooth, and polished, with
loose mats for carpets. The reader of 'Tom Cringle' will re-
member Tom's misadventure when he blundered into a party
of pretty laughing girls, slipped on one of these floors with a
retrospective misadventure, and could not rise till his creole
cousin slipped a petticoat over his head. All the arrange-
ments are made to shut out heat and light. The galleries
have sofas to lounge upon — everybody smokes, and smokes
where he pleases ; the draught sweeping away all residuary
traces. At the King's House to increase the accommodation a
large separate dining saloon has been thrown out on the north
side, to which you descend from the drawing room by stairs,
and thence along a covered passage. Among the mango
trees behind there is a separate suite of rooms for the aides-de-
camp, and a superb swimming bath sixty feet long and eight
feet deep. Altogether it was a sumptuous sort of palace
where a governor with 7,000/. a year might spend his term of
office with considerable comfort were it not haunted by rec~

King's House. 211

ollections of poor Eyre. He, it seems, lived in the ' King's
House,' and two miles off, within sight of his windows, lived
Gordon.

I had a more than gracious welcome from Colonel J

and his family. In him I found a high-bred soldier, who had
served with distinction in India, who had been at the storm
of Delhi, and who was close by when Nicholson was shot.
No one could have looked fitter for the post which he now
temporarily occupied. I felt uncomfortable at being thus
thrust upon his hospitality. I had letters of introduction
with me to the various governors of the islands, but on Colo-
nel J I had no claim at all. I was not even aware of his

existence, or he, very likely, of mine. If not he, at any rate
the ladies of his establishment, might reasonably look upon
me as a bore, and if I had been allowed I should simply have
paid my respects and have gone on to my mulatto. But they
would not hear of it. They were so evidently hearty in their
invitation to me that I could only submit and do my best not
to be a bore, the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.

In the circle into which I was thrown I was unlikely to
hear much of West Indian politics or problems. Colonel

J was acting as governor by accident, and for a few

months only. He had his professional duties to look after ;
his term of service in Jamaica had nearly expired ; and he
could not trouble himself with possibilities and tendencies
with which he would have no personal concern. As a specta-
tor he considered probably that we were not making much of
the West ludies, and were not on the way to make much.
He confirmed the complaint which I had heard so often, that
the blacks would not work for wages more than three days
in the week, or regularly upon those, preferring to cultivate
their own yams and sweet potatoes ; but as it was admitted
that they did work one way or another at home, I could not
see that there was much to complain of. The blacks were

212 The Caribs.

only doing as we do. We, too, only work as much as we like
or as we must, and we prefer working for ourselves to work-
ing for others.

On his special subjects the Colonel was as interesting as he
could not help being. He talked of the army and of the re-
cent changes in it without insisting that it was going to th*
devil. He talked of India and the Russians, and for a won-
der he had no Russophobia. He thought that England and
Russia might as easily be friends as enemies, and that it
would be better for the world if they were. As this had been
my own fixed opinion for the last thirty years, I thought him
a very sensible man. In the evening there was a small din-
ner party, made up chiefly of officers from the West Indian
regiments at Kingston. The English troops are in the moun-
tains at Newcastle, four or five thousand feet up and beyond
common visiting distance. Among those whom I met on this
occasion was an officer who struck me particularly. There
was a mystery about his origin. He had risen from the ranks,
but was evidently a gentleman by birth ; he had seen service
all over the "world ; he had been in Chili, and, among his
other accomplishments, spoke Spanish fluently ; he entered
the English army as a private, had been in the war in the
Transvaal, and was the only survivor of the regiment which
was surprised and shot down by the Boers in an intricate pass
where they could neither retreat nor defend themselves. On
that occasion he had escaped and saved the colours, for which
he was rewarded by a commission. He was acquainted with
many of my friends there who had been in the thick of the
campaign ; knew Sir Owen Lanyon, Sir Morrison Barlow, and
Colley. He had surveyed the plateau on Majuba Hill after
the action. I had heard one side of the story from a Boer

officer ; from Mr. I heard the other ; and they were not

very unlike. Both agreed that the ball which killed Colley
did not come from a Dutch rifle. My Boer informant said

Recollections of the Boer War. 213

that be was last seen trying to rally a party of Lis own men
who were running. They wheeled round and fired wildly.
Colley was six or eight yards behind them. One of the
balls struck him and he fell dead. Mr. said that, see-
ing the day irreparably lost, and his own reputation shat-
tered along with it, he was generally believed to have shot
himself. Friend and foe alike loved Colley, and legends like
these are an unconscious tribute to his memory. The truth
can never be known. We believe as we wish or as we fancy.

Mr. was so fine an officer, so clever a man, and so reserved

about his personal affairs, that about him too ' myths ' were
growing. He was credited in the mess room with being the
then unknown author of ' Solomon's Mines.' Mr. Haggard

will forgive a mistake which, if he knows Mr. , he will

feel to be a compliment.

From general conversation I gathered that the sanguine
views of the Colonial Secretary were not widely shared. The
English interest was still something in Jamaica ; but the phe-
nomena of the Antilles were present there also, if in a less ex-
treme form. There were 700,000 coloured people in the isl-
and, but 14,000 or 15,000 whites ; and the blacks there also
were increasing rapidly, and the whites were stationary if not
declining. There was the same uneasy social jealous}', and
the absence of any social relation between the two races.
There were mulattoes in the island of wealth and consequence,
and at Government House there are no distinctions ; but
the English residents of pure colonial blood would not asso-
ciate with them, social exclusiveness increasing with political
equality. The blacks disliked the mulattoes ; the mulattoes
despised the blacks, and would not intermarry with them.
The impression was that the mulatto would die out, that the
tendency of the whites and blacks was to a constantly sharpen-
ing separation, and that if things went on as they were going
for another generation, it was easy to see which of the two

214 The English in the West Indies.

colours would then be in the ascendant. The blacks were
growing saucy, too ; with much else of the same kind. I
could but listen and wait to judge for myself.

Meanwhile my quarters were unexceptionable, my kind en-
tertainers leaving nothing undone to make my stay with them
agreeable. In hot climates one sleeps lightly ; but light sleep
is all that one wants, and one wakes early. The swimming
bath was waiting for me underneath my window. After a
plunge in the clear cold water came coffee, grown and dried
and roasted on the spot, and ' made ' as such coffee ought
to be. Then came the early walk. One missed the tropical
luxuriance of Trinidad and Dominica, for the winter months
in Jamaica are almost rainless; but it would have been
beautiful anywhere else, and the mango trees were in their
glory. There was a corner given to orchids, which were hung
in baskets and just coming into flower. Lizards swarmed in
the sunshine, running up the tree trunks, or basking on the
garden seats. Snakes there are none ; the mongoose has
cleared them all away so completely that there is nothing left
for him to eat but the poultry, in which he makes havoc, and,
having been introduced to exterminate the vermin, has be-
come a vermin himself.

To drive, to ride, to visit was the employment of the days.
I saw the country. I saw what people were doing, and heard
what they had to say.

The details are mostly only worth forgetting., The senior

aide-de-camp, Captain C , an officer in the Engineers, was

a man of ability and observation. He, too, like the Colonel,
was more interested in his profession, to which he was anx-
ious to return, than in the waning fortunes of the West In-
dies. He superintended, however, the social part of the gov-
ernor's business to perfection. Anything which I wished for
had only to be mentioned to be provided. He gave me the
benefit too, though less often than I could have wished, of his

The Mountain Station. 215

shrewd, and not ungenial, observations. He drove me one
morning into Kingston. I had passed through it hastily on
the day of my landing. There were libraries, museums, pub-
lic offices, and such like to be seen, besides the town itself.
High up on the mountain side, more often in the clouds than
out of them, the cantonments of the English regiments were
visible from the park at Government House. The slope
where they had been placed was so steep that one wondered
how they held on. They looked like tablecloths stretched
out to dry. I was to ride up there one day. Meanwhile, as
we were driving through the park and saw the white spots
shining up above us, I asked the aide-de-camp what the pri-
vates found to do in such a place. The ground was too steep
for athletics ; no cricket could be possible there, no lawn
tennis, no quoits, no anything. There were no neighbours.
Sports there were none. The mongoose had destroyed the
winged game, and there was neither hare nor rabbit, pig nor
deer ; not a wild animal to be hunted and killed. Y/ith
nothing to do, no one to speak to, and nothing to kill, what
could become of them ? Did they drink ? Well, yes. They
drank rum occasionally ; but there were no public-houses.
They could only get it at the canteen, and the daily allowance
was moderate. As to beer, it was out of reach altogether.
At the foot of the mountains it was double the price which
it was in England. At Newcastle the price wTas doubled
again by the cost of carriage to the camp. I inquired if they
did not occasionally hang themselves. ' Perhaps they would,*
he said, ' if they had no choice, but they preferred to desert,
and this they did in large numbers. They slipped down the
back of the range, made their way to the sea, and escaped
to the United States.' The officers — what became of them?
The officers ! Oh, well ! they gardened ! Did they like it ?
Some did and some didn't. They were not so ill off as the
men, as occasionally they could come down on leave.

216 The English in the West Indies.

One wondered what the process had been which had led
the authorities to select such a situation. Of course it was for
the health of the troops, but the hill country in Jamaica is
wide ; there were many other places available, less utterly
detestable, and ennui and discontent are as mischievous as

fever. General ■ , a short time ago, went up to hold an

inquiry into the desertions, and expressed his wonder how
such things could be. With such air, such scenery, such
views far and wide over the island, what could human creat-
ures wish for more ? ' You would desert yourself, general,'
said another officer, ' if you were obliged to stay there a
month.'

Captain C undertook that I should go up myself in a

day or two. He promised to write and make arrangements.
Meanwhile we went on to Kingston. It was not beautiful.
There was Rodney's statue. Rodney is venerated in Jamaica,
as he ought to be ; but for him it would have been a Spanish
colony again. But there is nothing grand about the build-
ings, nothing even handsome, nothing even specially char-
acteristic of England or the English mind. They were once
perhaps business-like, and business having slackened they
are now dingy. Shops, houses, wharves, w7ant brightness
and colour. We called at the office of the Colonial Secretary,
the central point of the administration. It was an old man-
sion, plain, unambitious, sufficient perhaps for its purpose,
but lifeless and dark. If it represented economy there would
be no objection. The public debt has doubled since it be-
came a Crown colony. In 1876 it was half a million. It is
iow more than a million and a half. The explanation is the '
extension of the railway system, and there has been no culpa-
ble extravagance. I do not suppose that the re-establishment
of a constitution would mend matters. Democracies are al-
ways extravagant. The majority, who have little property
or none, regulate the expenditure. They lay the taxes on

Public Expenditure. 217

the minority, who have to find the money, and have no in-
terest in sparing them.

Ireland when it was governed by the landowners, Jamaica
in the days of slavery, were administered at a cost which
seems now incredibly small. The authority of the landowners
and of the planters was undisputed. They were feared and
obeyed, and magistrates unpaid and local constables sufficed
to maintain tolerable order. Their authority is gone. Their
functions are transferred to the police, and every service has
to be paid for. There may be fewer serious crimes, but the
subordination is immeasurably less, the expense of adminis-
tration is immeasurably greater. I declined to be taken over
sugar mills, or to be shown the latest improvements. I was
too ignorant to understand in what the improvements con-
sisted, and could take them upon trust. The public bakery
was more interesting. In tropical climates a hot oven in a
small house makes an inconvenient addition to the temper-
ature. The bread for Kingston, and for many miles around it,
is manufactured at night by a single company and is distribut-
ed in carts in the morning. "We saw the museum and public
library. There were the usual specimens of island antiquities
— of local fish, birds, insects, reptiles, plants, geological for-
mations, and such like. In the library were old editions of
curious books at the West Indies, some of them unique, ready
to yield ampler pictures of the romance of the old life there
than we at present possess. I had but leisure to glance at
title-pages and engravings. The most noticeable relic pre-
served there, if it be only genuine, is the identical bauble which
Cromwell ordered to be taken away from the Speaker's table
in the House of Commons. Explanations are given of the
manner in which it came to Jamaica. The evidence, so far
as I could understand it, did not appear conclusive.

Among the new industries in the island in the place of sugar
was, or ought to be, tobacco. A few years ago I asked Sir

-218 The English in the West Indies.

W. Hooker, the chief living authority in such matters, why
Cuba was allowed the monopoly of delicate cigar tobacco —
whether there were no other countries where it could be
grown equally good. He said that at the very moment cigars,
as fine as the finest Havanas, were being produced in Jamaica.
He gave me an excellent specimen with the address of the
house which supplied it ; and for a year or two I was able to
buy from it what, if not perfect, was more than tolerable.
The house acquired a reputation ; and then, for some reason
or other, perhaps from weariness of the same flavour, perhaps
from a falling off in the character of the cigars, I, and possibly
others, began to be less satisfied. Here on the spot I wished

to mate another experiment. Captain C introduced me

to a famous manufacturer, a Spaniard, with a Spanish mana-
ger under him who had been trained at Havana. I bespoke
his good will by adjuring him in his own tongue not to dis-
appoint me ; and I believe that he gave me the best that he
had. But, alas ! it is with tobccco as with most other things.
Democracy is king ; and the greatest happiness of the great-
est number is the rule of modern life. The average of every-
thing is higher than it used to be ; the high quality which
rises above mediocrity is rare or is non-existent. We are
swept away by the genius of the age, and must be content
with such other blessings as it has been pleased to bring with
it.

Why should I murmur thus and vainly moan ?
The gods will have it so — their will be done, '

The earth is patient also, and allows the successive genera-
tions of human creatures to play their parts upon her surface
as they please. She spins on upon her own course ; and seas
and skies, and crags and forests, are spiritual and beautiful
as ever.

1 Euripides.

Valley in the Blue Mountains. 219

Gordon's Town is a straggling village in the Blue Range

underneath Newcastle. Colonel J had a villa there, and

one afternoon he took me over to see it. You pass abruptly
from the open country into the mountains. The way to
Gordon's Town was by the side of the Hope river, which cuts
its way out of them in a narrow deep ravine. The stream
was now trickling faintly among the stones ; the enormous
boulders in the bed were round as cannon balls, and weigh-
ing hundreds of tons, show what its power must be in the
coming down of the floods. Within the limits of the torrent,
which must rise at such times thirty feet above its winter
level, the rocks were bare and stern, no green thing being
able to grow there. Above the line the tropical vegetation
was in all its glory : ferns and plantains waving in the moist
air ; cedars, tamarinds, gum trees, orange trees striking their
roots among the clefts of the crags, and hanging out over the
abysses below them. Aloes flung up their tall spiral stems ;
flowering shrubs and creepers covered bank and slope with
green and blue and white and yellow, and above and over
our heads, as we drove along, stood out the great limestone
blocks which thunder down when loosened by the rain.
Farther up the hill sides, where the slopes are less precipi-
tous, the forest has been burnt off by the unthrifty blacks, who
use fire to clear the ground for their yam gardens, and destroy
the timber over a dozen acres when they intend to cultivate
but a single one. The landscape suffers less than the soil.
The effect to the eye is merely that the mountains in Jamaica,
as in temperate climates, become bare at a moderate altitude,
and their outlines stand out sharper against the sky.

Introduced among scenery of this kind, we followed the
river two or three miles, when it was crossed by a bridge,
above which stood my friend Miss Burton's lodging house,
where she had designed entertaining me. At Gordon's Town,
which is again a mile farther on, the valley widens out, and

220 The English in the West Indies.

there are cocoa and coffee plantations. Through an opening
we saw far above our heads, like specks of snow against the
mountain side, the homes or prisons of our unfortunate
troops. Overlooking the village through which we were
passing, and three hundred feet above it, was perched the
Colonel's villa on a projecting spur where a tributary of the
Hope river has carved out. a second ravine. We drove to
the door up a steep winding lane among coffee bushes,
which scented the air with their jessamine-like blossom,
and wild oranges on which the fruit hung untouched, glow-
ing like balls of gold. We were now eleven hundred feet
above the sea. The air was already many degrees cooler than
at Kingston. The ground in front of the house was levelled
for a garden. Ivy was growing about the trellis work, and
scarlet geraniums and sweet violets and roses, which cannot
be cultivated in the lower regions, were here in full bloom.
Elsewhere in the grounds there was a lawn tennis court to
tempt the officers down from their eyrie in the clouds. The
house was empty, in charge of servants. From the balcony
in front of the drawing room we saw peak rising behind peak,
till the highest, four thousand feet above us, was lost in the
white mist. Below was the valley of the Hope river with its
gardens and trees and scattered huts, with buildings here and
there of higher pretensions. On the other side the tributary
stream rushed down its own ravine, while the breeze among
the trees and the sound of the falling waters swayed up to us
in intermittent pulsations.

The place had been made, I believe, in the days of planta-
tion prosperity. What would become of it all, if Jamaica
drifted after her sisters in the Antilles, as some persons
thought that she was drifting, and became, like Grenada, an
island of small black proprietors? Was such a fate really
hanging over her ? Not necessarily, not by any law of nature.
If it came, it would come from the dispiritment, the lack of

VALLEY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. JAMAICA.

Valley in the Blue Mountains. 221

energy and hope in the languid representatives of the English
colonists ; for the land even in the mountains will grow what
it is asked to grow, and men do not live by sugar alone ; and
my friend Dr. Nicholl in Dominica had shown what English
energy could do if it was alive and vigorous. The pale com-
plaining beings of whom I saw too many, seemed as if they
could not be of the same race as the men who ruled in
the days of the slave trade. The question to be asked in
every colony is, what sort of men is it rearing ? If that can-
not be answered satisfactorily, the rest is not worth caring/
for. The blacks do not deserve the ill that is spoken of them. J
The Colonel's house is twelve miles from Kingston. He told
me that a woman would walk in with a load for him, and re-
turn on the same day with another, for a shilling. With,
such material of labour wisely directed, whites and blacks-
might live and prosper together ; but even the poor negro'
will not work when he is regarded only as a machine to bring!
grist to his master's milL

CHAPTER XIV.

Visit to Port Royal — Dockyard — Town — Church — Fort Augusta — The
eyrie in the mountains — Ride to Newcastle — Society in Jamaica —
Religious bodies — Liberty and authority.

A new fort was being built at the mouth of the harbour.
New batteries were being armed on the sandbanks at Port

Royal. Colonel J had to inspect what was going on, and

he allowed me to go with him. We were to lunch with the
commodore of the station at the Port Royal dockyard. I
could then see the town — or what was left of it, for the story
went that half of it had been swallowed up by an earthquake.
We ran out from Kingston, passing under the sterns of the
Spanish frigates. I was told that there were always one or
more Spanish ships of war stationed there, but no one knew
anything about them except generally that they were on the
look-out for Cuban conspirators. There wTas no exchange
of courtesies between their officers and ours, nor even offi-
cial communication beyond what was formally necessary. I
thought it strange, but it was no business of mine. My sur-
prise, however, was admitted to be natural. As the launch
drew little water, we had no occasion to follow the circuitous
channel, but went straight over the shoals. We passed close
by Gallows Point, where the Johnny crows used to pick the
pirates' bones. In the mangrove swamp adjoining, it was
said that there was an old Spanish cemetery ; but the swamp
Avas poisonous, and no one had ever seen it. At the dock-
yard pier the commodore was waiting for us. I found that
he was an old acquaintance whom I had met ten years before

Port Royal. 223

at the Cape. He was a brisk, smart officer, quiet and sailor-
like in bis manners, but with plenty of talent and cultivation.
He showed us his stores and his machinery, large engines,
and engineers to work them, ready for any work which might
be wanted, but apparently with none to do. We went over
the hospital, airy and clean, with scarcely a single occupant,
so healthy has now been made a spot which was once a nest
of yellow fever. Naval stores soon become antiquated ; and
parts of the great square were paved with the old cannon
balls which had become useless on the introduction of rifled
guns. The fortifications were antiquated also, 'but new works
were being thrown up armed with the modern monster can-
non. One difficulty struck me ; Port Royal stood upon a
sand-bank. In such a place no spring of fresh water could be
looked for. On the large acreage of roofs there were no
shoots to catch the rain and carry it into cisterns. Whence
did the water come for the people in the town ? How were
the fleets supplied which used to ride there ? How was it in
the old times when Port Royal was crowded with revelling
crews of buccaneers ? I found that every drop which is con-
sumed in the place, or which is taken on board either of mer-
chant ship or man-of-war, is brought in a steam tug from a
spring eight miles off upon the coast. Before steam came in,
it was fetched in barges rowed by hand. Nothing could be
easier than to save the rain which falls in abundance. Noth-
ing could be easier than to lay pipes along the sand-spit to
the spring. But the tug plies daily to and fro, and no one
thinks more about the matter.

A West Indian regiment is stationed at Port Royal.
After the dockyard we went through the soldiers' quarters
and then walked through the streets of the once famous
station. It is now a mere hamlet of boatmen and fishermen,
squalid and wretched, without and within. Half-naked
children stared at us from the doors with their dark, round

224 The English in the West Indies.

eyes. I found it hard to call up the scenes of riot, and con-
fusion, and wild excitement which are alleged to have been
witnessed there. The story that it once covered a far larger
area has been, perhaps, invented to account for the incon-
gruity. Old plans exist which seem to show that the end of
the spit could never have been of any larger dimensions than
it is at present. There is proof enough, however, that in the
sand there lie the remains of many thousand English sol-
diers and seamen, who ended their lives there for one cause
or other. Tho bones lie so close that they are turned up as
in a country churchyard when a fresh grave is dug. The
walls of the old church are inlaid thickly with monuments
and monumental tablets to the memory of officers of either
service, young and old ; some killed by fever, some by acci-
dents of war or sea ; some decorated with the honours which
they had won in a hundred fights, some carried off before
they had gathered the first flower of fame. The costliness of
many of these memorials was an affecting indication how
precious to their families those now resting there once had
been. One in high relief struck me as a characteristic speci-
men of Rubillac's workmanship. It was to a young lieuten-
ant who had been killed by the bursting of a gun. Flame
and vapour were rushing out of the breech. The youth him-
self was falling backwards, with his arms spread out, and a
vast preternatural face — death, judgment, eternity, or what-
ever it was meant to be — was glaring at him through the
smoke. Bad art, though the execution was remarkable ; but
better, perhaps, than the weeping angels now grown common
among ourselves.

After luncheon the commodore showed us his curiosities,
especially his garden, which, considering the state of his
water supply, he had created under unfavourable conditions.
He had a very respectable collection of tropical ferns and
flowers, with palms and plantains to shade and shelter them.

Fort Augusta. 225

He was an artist besides, within the lines of his own profes-
sion. Drawings of ships and boats of all sorts and in all at-
titudes by his own brush or pencil were hanging on the walls
of his working room. He was good enough to ask me to
spend a day or two with him at Port Royal before I left the
island, and I looked forward with special pleasure to becom-
ing closer acquainted with such a genuine piece of fine-
grained British oak.

There were the usual ceremonies to be attended to. The
officers of the guardship and gunboats had to be called on.
The forts constructed, or in the course of construction, were
duly inspected. I believe that there is a real serious inten-
tion to strengthen Port Royal in view of the changes which
may come about through the opening, if that event ever
takes place, of the Darien canal.

Our last visit was to a fort deserted, or all but deserted —
the once too celebrated Fort Augusta, which deserves partic-
ular description. It stands on the inner side of the lagoon
commanding the deep-water channel at the point of the great
mangrove swamp at the mouth of the Cobre river. For the
purpose for which it was intended no better situation could
have been chosen, had there been nothing else to be consid-
ered except the defence of the harbour, for a vessel trying to
reach Kingston had to pass close in front of its hundred
guns. It was constructed on a scale becoming its impor-
tance, with accommodation for two or three regiments, and
the regiments were sent thither, and they perished, regiment
after regiment, officers and men, from the malarious exhala-
tions of the morass. Whole battalions were swept away.
The ranks were filled up by reinforcements from home, and
these, too, went the same road. Of one regiment the only
survivors, according to the traditions of the place, were a
quartermaster and a corporal. Finally it occurred to the
authorities at the Horse Guards that a regiment of Hussar3
15

226 The English in the West Indies.

would be a useful addition to the garrison. It was not easy
to see what Hussars were to do there. There is not a spot
where the horses could stand twenty yards beyond the lines ;
nor could they reach Fort Augusta at all except in barges.
However, it was perhaps well that they were sent. Horses
and men went the way of the rest. The loss of the men
might have been supplied, but horses were costly, and the
loss of them was more serious. Fort Augusta was gradually
abandoned, and is now used only as a powder magazine. A
guard is kept there of twenty blacks from the West Indian
force, but even these are changed every ten days — so deadly
the vapour of that malarious jungle is now understood to be.

I never saw so spectral a scene as met my eyes when we
steamed up to the landing place — ramparts broken down,
and dismantled cannon lying at the foot of the wall over-
grown by jungle. The sentinel who presented arms was
like a corpse in uniform. He was not pale, for he was a
negro — he was green, and he looked like some ghoul or afrite
in a ghastly cemetery. The roofs of the barracks and store-
houses had fallen in, the rafters being left standing with the
light shining between them as through the bones of skele-
tons. Great piles of shot lay rusting, as not worth removal ;
among them conical shot, so recently had this fatal charncl
house been regarded as a fit location for British artillery-
men.

I breathed more freely as we turned our backs upon
the hideous memorial of parliamentary administration, and
steamed away into a purer air. My conservative instincts
had undergone a shock. As we look back into the past, the
brighter features stand out conspicuously. The mistakes
and miseries have sunk in the shade and are forgotten. In
the present faults and merits are visible alike. The faults
attract chief notice that they may be mended ; and as there
seem so many of them, the impulse is to conclude that the

Newcastle. 227

past was better. It is well to be sometimes reminded what
the past really was. In Colonel J I found a strong ad-
vocate of the late army reforms. Thanks to recovering
energy and more distinct conscientiousness, thanks to the
all-seeing eye of the Press, such an experiment as that of
Fort Augusta could hardly be tried again, or if tried could
not be persisted in. Extravagance and absurdities, however,
remain, and I was next to witness an instance of them.

Having ceased to quarter our regiments in mangrove
swamps, we now build a camp for them among the clouds.

I mentioned that Captain C had undertaken that I should

see Newcastle. He had written to a friend there to say that
I was coming up, and the junior aide-de-camp kindly lent his
services as a guide. As far as Gordon's Town we drove along
the same road which we had followed before. There, at a
small wayside inn, we found horses waiting which were ac-
customed to the mountain. Suspicious mists were hanging
about aloft, but the landlord, after a glance at them, prom-
ised us a fine day, and we mounted and set off. My animal's
merits were not in his appearance, but he had been up and
down a hundred times, and might be trusted to accomplish
his hundred and first without misfortune. For the first mile
or so the road was tolerably level, following the bank of the
river under the shade of the forest. It then narrowed into a
horse path and zigzagged upwards at the side of a torrent
into the deep pools of which we occasionally looked down
over the edges of uncomfortable precipices. Then again
there was a level, with a village and coffee plantations and
oranges and bananas. After this the vegetation changed.
We issued out upon open mountain, with English grass,
English clover, English gorse, and other familiar acquaint-
ances introduced to make the isolation less intolerable. The
track was so rough and narrow that Ave could ride only in
single file, and was often no better than a watercourse ; yet

228 The English in the West Indies.

by this and no other way every article had to be carried on
donkeys' backs or human heads which was required for the
consumption of 300 infantry and 100 artillerymen. Artillery-
men might seem to imply artillery, but they have only a single
small field gun. They are there for health's sake only, and
to be fit for work if wanted below. An hour's ride brought
us to the lowest range of houses, which were 4,000 feet above
the sea. From thence they rose, tier above tier, for 500 feet
more. The weather so far had held up, and the views had
been glorious, but we passed now into cloud, through which
we saw, dimly, groups of figures listlessly lounging. The
hillside was bare, and the slope so steep that there was no
standing on it, save where it had been flattened by the spade ;
and here in this extraordinary place were 400 young Eng-
lishmen of the common type of which soldiers are made,
with nothing to do and nothing to enjoy — remaining, unless
they desert or die of ennui, for one, two, or three years, as
their chance may be. Every other day they can see nothing,
save each other's forms and faces in the fog ; for, fine and
bright as the air may be below, the moisture in the air is
condensed into cloud by the chill rock and soil of the high
ranges. The officers come down now and then on furlough
or on duty ; the men rarely and hardly at all, and soldiers,

in spite of General ■ , cannot always be made happy by

the picturesque. They are not educated enough to find em-
ployment for their minds, and of amusement there is none.

We continued our way up, the track if anything growing
steeper, till we reached the highest point of the camp, and
found ourselves before a pretty cottage with creepers climb-
ing about it belonging to the major in command. A few
yards off was the officers' mess room. They expected us.
They knew my companion, and visitors from the under-world
were naturally welcome. The major was an active clever
man, with a bright laughing Irish wife, whose relations in

Newcastle. 229

the old country were friends of my own. The American
consul and his lady happened to have ridden up also the
same day ; so, in spite of fog, which grew thicker every mo-
ment, we had a good time. As to seeing, we could see noth-
ing ; but then there was nothing to see except views ; and
panoramic views from mountain tops, extolled as they may
be, do not particularly interest me. The officers, so far as I
could learn, are less ill off than the privates. Those who are
married have their wives with them ; they can read, they can
draw, they can ride ; they have gardens about their houses
Avhere they can grow English flowers and vegetables and
try experiments. Science can be followed anywhere, and

is everywhere a resource. Major told me that he had

never known what it was to find the day too long. Healthy
the camp is at any rate. The temperature never rises above
70° nor sinks often below 60°. They require charcoal fires
to keep the damp out and blankets to sleep under ; and when
they see the sun it is an agreeable change and something to
talk about. There are no large incidents, but small ones do
instead. While I was there a man came to report that he
had slipped by accident and set a stone rolling ; the stone
had cut a water pipe in two, and it had to be mended, and
was an afternoon's work for somebody. Such officers as have
no resources in themselves are, of course, bored to extinction.
There is neither furred game to hunt nor feathered game to
shoot ; the mongoose has eaten up the partridges. I sug-
gested that they should import two or three couple of bears
from Norway ; they would fatten and multiply among the
roots and sugar canes, with a black piccaninny now and then
for a special delicacy. One of the party extemporised us a
speech which would be made on the occasion in Exeter Hall.
We had not seen the wrorst of the weather. As we mount-
ed to ride back the fog changed to rain, and the rain to a
delude. The track became a torrent. Macintoshes were a

230 The English in the West Indies.

-vanity, for the water rushed down one's neck, and every
crease made itself into a conduit carrying the stream among
one's inner garments. Dominica itself had not prepared me
for the violence of these Jamaican downpourings. False had
proved our prophet down below. There was no help for it
but to go on ; and we knew by experience that one does not
melt on these occasions. At a turn of the road we met
another group of riders, among them Lady N , who, dur-
ing her husband's absence in England, was living at a coun-
try house in the hills. She politely stopped and would have
spoken, but it was not weather to stand talking in ; the tor-
rent washed us apart.

And now comes the strangest part of the story. A thou-
sand feet down we passed out below the clouds into clear
bright sunshine. Above us it was still black as ever ; the
vapour clung about the peaks and did not leave them. Un-
derneath us and round us it was a lovely summer's day. The
farther we descended the fewer the signs that any rain had
fallen. When we reached the stables at Gordon's Town, the
dust was on the road as we left it, and the horsekeeper con-
gratulated us on the correctness of his forecast. Clothes
soon dry in that country, and we drove down home none the
worse for our wetting. I was glad to have seen a place of
which I had heard so much. On the whole, I hoped that
perhaps by-and-by the authorities may discover some camp-
ing ground for our poor soldiers halfway between the In-
ferno of Fort Augusta and the Caucasian cliffs to which they
are chained like Prometheus. Malice did say that Newcastle

was the property of a certain Sir , a high official of a past

generation, who wished to part with it, and found a conven-
ient purchaser in the Government.

The hospitalities at Government House were well main-
tained under the J administration. The colonel was

gracious, the lady beautiful and brilliant. There were lawn

Parties at Government House. 231

parties and evening parties, when all that was best iii the isl-
and was collected ; the old Jamaican aristocracy, army and
navy officers, civilians, eminent lawyers, a few men among
them of high intelligence. The tone was old-fashioned and
courteous, with little, perhaps too little, of the go-a-headism
of younger colonies, but not the less agreeable on that ac-
count. As to prospects, or the present condition of things
in the island, there were wide differences of opinion. If
there was unanimity about anything, it was about the con-
sequences likely to arise from an extension of the principle of
self-government. There, at all events, lay the right road to
the wrong place. The blacks had nothing to complain of,
and the wrong at present was on the other side. The taxa-
tion falls heavily on the articles consumed by the upper
classes. The duty on tea, for instance, was a shilling a
pound, and the duties on other luxuries in the same propor-
tion. It did not touch the negroes at all. They were acquir-
ing land, and some thought that there ought to be a land tax.
They would probably object and resist, and trouble would
come if it was proposed, for the blacks object to taxes ; as
long as there are white men to pay them, they will be satis-
fied to get the benefit of the expenditure. But let not their
English friends suppose that when they have the island for
their own they will tax themselves for police or schools, or
for any other of those educational institutions from which the
believers in progress anticipate such glorious results.

As to the planters, it seemed agreed that when an estate
was unencumbered and the owner resided upon it and man-
aged it himself, he could still keep afloat. It was agreed also
that when the owner was an absentee the cost of management
consumed all the profits, and thus the same impulse to sell
which had gone so far in the Antilles was showing itself more
and more in Jamaica also. Fine properties all about the isl-
and were in the market for any price which purchasers could

232 The English in the West Indies.

be found to give. Too many even of the old English families
were tired of the struggle, and were longing to be out of it
at any cost.

At one time we heard much of the colonial Church and the
power which it was acquiring, and as it seems unlikely that
the political authority of the white race will be allowed to
reassert itself, it must be through their minds and through
/those other qualities which religion addresses that the black
race will be influenced by the white, if it is ever to be influ-
enced at all.

I had marked the respect with which the Catholic clergy
were treated in Dominica, and even the Hayti Republic still
maintains the French episcopate and priesthood. But I could
not find that the Church of England in Jamaica either was at
present or had ever been more than the Church of the English
in Jamaica, respected as long as the English gentry were a
dominant power there, but with no independent charm to
work on imagination or on superstition. Labat says, as I
noted above, that the English clergy in his time did not bap-
tise the black babies, on the curious ground that Christians
could not lawfully be held as slaves, and the slaves therefore
were not to be made Christians. A Jesuit Father whom I
met at Government House told me that even now the clergy
refuse to baptise the illegitimate children, and as, according
to the official returns, two-thirds of the children that are born
in Jamaica come into the world thus irregularly, they are not
likely to become more popular than they used to be. Per-
haps Father was doing what a good many other people

do, making a general practice out of a few instances. Per-
haps the blacks themselves who wish their children to be
Christians carry them to the minister whom they prefer, and
that minister may not be the Anglican clergyman. Of Catho-
lics there are not many in Jamaica ; of the Moravians I heard
on all sides the warmest praise. They, above all the religious

Influences of Religion. 233

bodies in the island, are admitted to have a practical power
for good over the limited number of people which belong to
them. But the Moravians are but a few. They do not rush
to make converts in the highways and hedges, and my obser-
vations in Dominica almost led me to wish that, in the ab-
sence of other forms of spiritual authority, the Catholics
might become more numerous than they are. The priests in|
Dominica were the only Europeans who, for their own sakes
and on independent grounds, were looked up to with fear
and respect.

The religion of the future ! That is the problem of prob-
lems that rises before us at the close of this waning century.
The future of the West Indies is a small matter. Yet that,
too, like all else, depends on the spiritual beliefs which are
to rise out of the present confusion. Men will act well and
wisely, or ill and foolishly, according to the form and force
of their conceptions of duty. Once before, under the Koman
Empire, the conditions were not wholly dissimilar. The in-
herited creed had become unbelievable, and the scientific in-
tellect was turning materialist. Christianity rose out of the
chaos, confounding statesmen and philosophers, and became
the controlling power among mankind for 1,800 years. But
Christianity found a soil prepared for the seed. The masses
of the inhabitants of the Koman world were not materialist.
The masses of the people believed already in the supernatural
and in penal retribution after death for their sins. Lucretius
complains of the misery produced upon them by the terrors
of the anticipated Tartarus. Serious and good men were
rather turning away from atheism than welcoming it ; and if
they doubted the divinity of the Olympian gods, it was not
because they doubted whether gods existed at all, but becauso
the immoralities attributed to them were unworthy of the ex-
ilted nature of the Divine Being. The phenomena are dif-
ferent now. "Who is now made wretched by the fear of hell ?

234 The English in the West Indies.

The tendency of popular thought is against the supernatural
in any shape. Far into space as the telescope can search, deep
as analysis can penetrate into mind and consciousness or the
forces which govern natural things, popular thought finds
only uniformity and connection of cause and effect — no sign
anywhere of a personal will which is influenced by prayer or
moral motive. When a subject is still obscure we are con-
fident that it admits of scientific explanation ; we no longer
refer ' ad Deum,' whom we regard as a constitutional monarch
taking no direct part at all. The new creed, however, not
having crystallised as yet into a shape which can be openly
professed, and as without any creed at all the flesh and the
devil might become too powerful, we maintain the old names
and forms, as we maintain the monarchy. We surround both
with reverence and majesty, and the reverence, being con-
fined to feeling, continues to exercise a vague but wholesome
influence. We row in one way while we look another. In
the presence of the marked decay of Protestantism as a posi-
tive creed, the Protestant powers of Europe may, perhaps,
patch up some kind of reconciliation writh the old spiritual
organisation which was shattered in the sixteenth century,
and has since shown no unwillingness to adapt itself to mod-
ern forms of thought. The Olympian gods survived for seven
centuries after Aristophanes with the help of allegory and
'economy.' The Church of Kome may suiwive as long after
Calvin and Luther. Carlyle mocked at the possibility when
I ventured to say so to him. Yet Carlyle seemed to think
that the mass was the only form of faith in Europe which
had any sincerity remaining in it.

A religion, at any rate, which will keep the West Indian
blacks from falling back into devil worship is still to seek.
Constitutions and belief in progress may satisfy Europe, but
will not answer in Jamaica. In spite of the priests, child
murder and cannibalism have reappeared in Hayti ; but with-

Liberty and Authority. 235

out them things might have been worse than they are, and
the preservation of white authority and influence in any form
at all may be better than none.

White authority and white influence may, however, still be
preserved in a nobler and better way. Slavery was a sur-
vival from a social order which had passed away, and slavery
could not be continued. It does not follow that per se it was
a crime. The negroes who were sold to the dealers in the
African factories were most of them either slaves already to
worse masters or were servi, servants in the old meaning of
the word, prisoners of war, or else criminals, servati or re-
served from death. They would otherwise have been hilled ;
and since the slave trade has been abolished are again killed
in the too celebrated 'customs.' It was a crime when the
chiefs made war on each other for the sake of captives whom
they could turn into money. In many instances, perhaps in
most, it was innocent and even beneficent. Nature has made
us unequal, and Acts of Parliament cannot make us equal.
Some must lead and some must follow, and the question is
only of degree and kind. For myself, I would rather be the
slave of a Shakespeare or a Burghley than the slave of a
majority in the House of Commons or the slave of my own
folly. Slavery is gone, with all that belonged to it ; but it
will be an ill day for mankind if no one is to be compelled
any more to obey those who are wiser than himself, and each
of us is to do only what is right in our own eyes. There
may be authority, yet not slavery : a soldier is not a slave, a
sailor is not a slave, a child is not a slave, a wife is not a
slave ; yet they may not live by their own wills or emanci-
pate themselves at their own pleasure from positions in
which nature has placed them, or into which they have them-
selves voluntarily entered. The negroes of the West Indies
are children, and not yet disobedient children. They have
their dreams, but for the present they are dreams only. If

236 The English in the West Indies.

you enforce self-govern merit upon them when they are not
asking for it, you may turn the dream into a reality, and wil-
fully drive them back into the condition of their ancestors,
from which the slave trade was the beginning of their eman-
cipation.

CHAPTER XV.

The Church of England in Jamaica — Drive to Castleton — Botanical
Gardens — Picnic by the river — Black women — Ball at Government
House — Mandeville — Miss Roy — Country Society — Manners — Amer-
ican visitors — A Moravian missionary — The modern Radical creed.

If I have spoken without enthusiasm of the working of the
Church of England among the negroes, I have not meant to
be disrespectful. As I lay awake at daybreak on the Sunday
morning after my arrival, I heard the sound of church bells,
not Catholic bells as at Dominica, but good old English chimes.
The Church is disestablished so far as law can disestablish it,
but, as in Barbadoes, the royal arms still stand over the arches
of the chancel. Introduced with the English conquest, it has
been identified with the ruling order of English gentry, re-
spectable, harmless, and useful, to those immediately con-
nected with it.

The parochial system, as in Barbadoes also, was spread
over the island. Each parish had its church, its parsonage
and its school, its fonts where the white children were bap-
tised— in spite of my Jesuit, I shall hope not whites only ;
and its graveyard, where in time they were laid to rest.
With their quiet Sunday services of the old type the country
districts were exact reproductions of English country villages.
The church whose bells I had heard was of the more fashion-
able suburban type, standing in a central situation halfway
to Kingston. The service was at the old English hour of
eleven. We drove to it in the orthodox fashion, with our
prayer books and Sunday costumes, the Colonel in uniform.

238 The English in the West Indies.

The gentry of the neighbourhood are antiquated in their
habits, and to go to church on Sunday is still regarded as a
simple duty. A dozen carriages stood under the shade at
the doors. The congregation was upper middle-class Eng-
lish of the best sort, and was large, though almost wholly
white. White tablets as at Port Koyal covered the walls,
with familiar English names upon them. But for the heat I
could have imagined myself at home. There were no Aaron
Bangs to be seen, or Paul Gelids, with the rough sense, the
vigour, the energy, and roystering lightheartedness of our
grandfathers. The faces of the men were serious and thought-
ful, with the shadow resting on them of an uncertain future.
They are good Churchmen still, and walk on in the old paths,
wherever those paths may lead. They are old-fashioned and
slow to change, and are perhaps belated in an eddy of the
great stream of progress ; but they were pleasant to see and
pleasant to talk to. After service there were the usual shakings
of hands among friends outside ; arrangements were made
for amusements and expeditions in which I was invited to
join — which were got up, perhaps, for my own entertain-
ment. I was to be taken to the sights of the neighbour-
hood ; I was to see this ; I was to see that ; above all, I must
see the Peak of the Blue Mountains. The peak itself I could
see better from below, for there it stood, never moving, be-
tween seven and eight thousand feet high. But I had had
mountain riding enough, and was allowed to plead my age
and infirmities. It was arranged finally that I should be
driven the next day to Castleton, seventeen miles off over a
mountain pass, to see the Botanical Gardens.

Accordingly early on the following morning we set off;

two carriages full of us ; Mr. M , a new friend lately

made, but I hope long to be preserved, on the box of his
four-in-hand. The road was as good as all roads are in
Jamaica and Barbadoes, and more cannot be said in their

Drive to Castleton. 239

favour. Forest trees made a roof over our heads as we climbed
to the crest of the ridge. Thence we descended the side of a
long valley, a stream running below us which gradually grew
into a river. We passed through all varieties of cultivation.
On the high ground there was a large sugar plantation,
worked by coolies, the first whom I had seen in Jamaica. In
the alluvial meadows on the river-side were tobacco fields,
cleanly and carefully kept, belonging to my Spanish friend
in Kingston, and only too rich in leaves. There was sago
too, and ginger, and tamarinds, and cocoa, and coffee, and
cocoa-nut palms. On the hill-sides were the garden farms of
the blacks, and were something to see and remember. They
receive from the Government at an almost nominal quit rent
an acre or two of uncleared forest. To this as the first step
they set light ; at twenty different spots we saw their fires
blazing. To clear an acre they waste the timber on half a
dozen or a dozen. They plant their yams and sweet potatoes
among the ashes and grow crops there till the soil is ex-
hausted. Then they move on to another, which they treat
with the same recklessness, leaving the first to go back to
scrub. Since the Chinaman burnt his house to roast his pig,
such waste was never seen. The male proprietors were
lounging about smoking. Their wives, as it was market day,
Avere tramping into Kingston with their baskets on their
heads ; we met them literally in thousands, all merry and
light-hearted, their little ones with little baskets trudging
at their side. Of the lords of the creation we saw, perhaps,
one to each hundred women, and he would be riding on mule
or donkey, pipe in mouth and carrying nothing. He would
be generally sulky too, while the ladies, young and old, had
all a civil word for us and curtsied under their loads. De-
cidedly if there is to be a black constitution I would give the
votes only to the women.

We reached Castleton at last. It was in a hot damp valley,

240 The English in the West Indies.

said to be a nest of yellow fever. The gardens slightly dis-
appointed me ; my expectations had been too much raised by
Trinidad. There were lovely flowers of course, and curious
plants and trees. Every known palm is growing there. They
try hard to grow roses, and they say that they succeed. They
were not in flower, and I could not judge. Bat the familiar
names were all there, and others which were not familiar,
the newest importations called after the great ladies of the
day. I saw one labelled Mabel Morrison. To find the
daughter of an ancient college friend and contemporary giv-
ing a name to a plant in the New World makes one feel
dreadfully old ; but I expected to find, and I did not find,
some useful practical horticulture going on. They ought, for
instance, to have been trying experiments with orange trees.
The orange in Jamaica is left to nature. They plant the
seeds, and leave the result to chance. They neither bud nor
graft, and go upon the hypothesis that as the seed is, so will
be the tree which comes of it. Yet even thus, so favourable
is the soil and climate that the oranges of Jamaica are prized
above all others which are sold in the American market. With
skill and knowledge and good selection they might produce
the finest in the world. ' There are dollars in that island,
sir,' as an American gentleman said to me, ' if they will look
for them in the right way.' Nothing of this kind was going
on at Castleton ; so much the worse, but perhaps things will
mend by-and-by. I was consoled partly by another specimen
of the Amherstia nobilis. It was not so large as those which
I had seen at Trinidad, but it was in splendid bloom, and
certainly is the most gorgeous flowering tree which the world
contains.

Wild nature also was luxuriantly beautiful. We picnicked
by the river, which here is a full rushing stream with pools
that would have held a salmon, and did hold abundant mullet.
We found a bower formed by a twisted vine, so thick that

Castleton. 241

neither sun nor rain could penetrate the roof. The floor was
of shining shingle, and the air breathed cool from off the
water. It was a spot which nymph or naiad may haunt here-
after, when nymphs are born again in the new era. The
creatures of imagination have fled away from modern enlight-
enment. But we were a pleasant party of human beings,
lying about under the shade upon the pebbles. "We had
brought a blanket of ice with us, and the champagne was
manufactured into cup by choicest West Indian skill. Fig-
ures fall unconsciously at such moments into attitudes which
would satisfy a painter, and the scenes remain upon the mem-
ory like some fine finished work of art. We had done with
the gardens, and I remember no more of them except that I
saw a mongoose stalking a flock of turkeys. The young ones
and their mother gathered together and showed fight. The
old cock, after the manner of the male animal, seemed chiefly
anxious for his own skin. On the way back we met the re-
turning stream of women and children, loaded heavily as be-
fore and with the same elastic step. In spite of all that is
incorrect about them, the women are the material to work
upon ; and if they saw that we were in earnest, they would
lend their help to make their husbands bestir themselves. A
Dutch gentleman once boasted to me of the wonderful pros-
perity of Java, where everybody was well off and everybody
was industrious. He so insisted upon the industry that I
asked him how it was brought about. Were the people
slaves? ' Oh,' he cried, as if shocked, 'God forbid that a
Christian nation should be so wicked as to keep slaves ! '
'Do they never wish to be idle?' I asked. 'Never, never,' he
said ; ' no, no : we do not permit anyone to be idle.'

My stay with Colonel J was drawing to a close ; one

great festivity was impending, which I wished to avoid ; but
the gracious lady insisted that I must remain. There was to
be a ball, and all the neighbourhood was invited. Pretty it
10

242 The English in the West Indies.

was sure to be. Windows and doors, galleries and passages,
would be all open. The gardens would be lighted up, and
the guests could spread as they pleased. Brilliant it all was ;
more brilliant than you would see in our larger colonies. A
ball in Sydney or Melbourne is like a ball in the north of
England or in New York. There are the young men in
black coats, and there are brightly dressed young ladies for
them to dance with. The chaperons sit along the walls ; the
elderly gentlemen withdraw to the card room. Here all was
different. The black coats in the ball at Jamaica were on the
backs of old or middle-aged men, and, except Government
officials, there was hardly a young man present in civilian
dress. The rooms glittered with scarlet and white and blue
and gold lace. The officers were there from the garrison and
the fleet ; but of men of business, of professional men, mer-
chants, planters, lawyers, &c, there were only those who had
grown up to middle age in the island, whose fortunes, bad or
good, were bound up with it. When these were gone, it
seemed as if there would be no one to succeed them. The
coveted heirs of great estates were no longer to be found for
mothers to angle after. The trades and professions in Kings-
ton had ceased to offer the prospect of an income to younger
) brothers who had to make their own way. For 250 years
1 generations of Englishmen had followed one upon another,
I but we seemed to have come to the last. Of gentlemen un-
connected with the public service, under thirty-five or forty,
there were few to be seen ; they were seeking their fortunes
/ elsewhere. The English interest in Jamaica is still a consid-
, erable thing. The English flag flies over Government House,
| and no one so far wishes to remove it. But the British popu-
lation is scanty and refuses to grow. Ships and regiments
come and go, and officers and State employes make what ap-
pears to be a brilliant society. But it is in appearance only.
The station is no longer a favourite one. They are gone;.

Mandeville. 243

those pleasant gentry whose country houses were the para-
dise of middies sixty years ago. All is changed, even to the
officers themselves. The drawling ensign of our boyhood,
brave as a lion in the field, and in the mess room or the
drawing room an idiot, appears also to be dead as the dodo.
Those that one meets now are intelligent and superior men —
no trace of the frivolous sort left. Is it the effect of the aboli-
tion of purchase, and competitive examinations ? Is it that
the times themselves are growing serious, and even the most
empty-headed feel that this is no season for levity ?

I had seen what Jamaican life was like in the upper spheres,
and I had heard the opinions that were current in them ; but
I wished to see other parts of the country. I wished to see
a class of people who were farther from head quarters, and
who might not all sing to the same note. I determined to
start off on an independent cruise of my own. In the centre
of the island, two thousand feet above the sea, it was reported
to me that I should find a delightful village called Mande-
ville, after some Duke of Manchester who governed Jamaica
a hundred years ago. The scenery was said to have a special
charm of its own, the air to be exquisitely pure, the land to
be well cultivated. Village manners were to be found there
of the old-fashioned sort, and a lodging-house and landlady
of unequalled merit. There was a railway for the first fifty
miles. The line at starting crosses the mangrove swamps at
the mouth of the Cobre river. You see the trees standing
in the water on each side of the road. Rising slowly, it
hardens into level grazing ground, stocked with cattle and
studded with mangoes and cedars. You pass Spanish Town,
of which only the roofs of the old State buildings are visible
from the carriages. Sugar estates follow, some of which are
still in cultivation, while ruined mills and fallen aqueducts
show where others once had been. The scenery becomes
more broken as you begin to ascend into the hills. River

244: The English in the West Indies.

beds, dry when I saw them, but powerful torrents in the
rainy season, are crossed by picturesque bridges. You come
to the forest, where the squatters were at their usual work,
burning out their yam patches. Columns of white smoke
were rising all about us, yet so abundant the timber and so
rapid the work of restoration when the devastating swarm
has passed, that in this direction they have as yet made no
marked impression, and the forest stretches as far as eye can
reach. The glens grew more narrow and the trees grander
as the train proceeded. After two hours we arrived at the
present terminus, an inland town with the singular name of
Porus. No explanation is given of it in the local handbooks ;
but I find a Porus among the companions of Columbus, and
it is probably an interesting relic of the first Spanish occupa-
tion. The railway had brought business. Mule carts were
going about, and waggons ; omnibuses stood in the yards,
and there were stores of various kinds. But it was all black.
There was not a white face to be seen after we left the sta-
tion. One of my companions in the train was a Cuban en-
gineer, now employed upon the line ; a refugee, I conject-
ured, belonging to the beaten party in the late rebellion,
from the bitterness with which he spoke of the Spanish ad-
ministration.

Porus is many hundred feet above the sea, in a hollow
where three valleys meet. Mandeville, to which I was bound,
was ten miles farther on, the road ascending all, the way. A
carriage was waiting for me, but too small for my luggage.
A black boy offered to carry up a heavy bag for a shilling, a
feat which he faithfully and expeditiously performed. After
climbing a steep hill, we crime out upon a rich undulating
plateau, long cleared and cultivated ; green fields with cows
feeding on them ; j^retty houses standing in gardens ; a Wes-
leyan station ; a Moravian station, with chapels and parson-
ages. The red soil was mixed with crumbling lumps of white

Mandeville. 245

coral, a ready-made and inexhaustible supply of manure.
Great silk-cotton trees towered up in lonely magnificence, the
home of the dreaded Jumbi — woe to the wretch who strikes
an axe into those sacred stems ! Almonds, cedars, mangoes,
gum trees spread their shade over the road. Orange trees
were everywhere ; sometimes in orchards, sometimes grow-
ing at their own wild will in hedges and copse and thicket.
Finally, at the outskirts of a perfectly English village, we
brought up at the door of the lodging house kept by the justly
celebrated Miss Roy. The house, or cottage, stood at the
roadside, at the top of a steep flight of steps ; a rambling
one-story building, from which rooms, creeper-covered, had
been thrown out as they were wanted. There was the uni-
versal green verandah into which they all opened ; and the
windows looked out over a large common, used of old, and
perhaps now, as a race-course ; on wooded slopes, with sunny
mansions dropped here and there in openings among the
woods ; farm buildings at intervals in the distance, surrounded
by clumps of palms ; and beyond them ranges of mountains
almost as blue as the sky against which they were faintly vis-
ible. Miss Roy, the lady and mistress of the establishment,
came out to meet me : middle-aged, with a touch of the black
blood, but with a face in which one places instant and sure
dependence, shrewd, quiet, sensible, and entirely good-hu-
moured. A white-haired brother, somewhat infirm and older
than she, glided behind her as her shadow. She attends to
the business. His pride is in his garden, where he has gath-
ered a collection of rare plants in admired disorder ; the night-
blowing cereus hanging cai-elessly over a broken paling, and
a palm, unique of its kind, waving behind it. At the back
were orange trees and plantains and coffee bushes, with loug-
tailed humming birds flitting about their nests among the
branches. All kinds of delicacies, from fruit and preserves to
coffee, Miss Roy grows for her visitors on her own soil, and

240 The English in the West Indies.

prepares from the first stage to the last with her own cun-
ning hands.

Having made acquaintance with the mistress, I strolled
out to look about me. After walking up the road for a
quarter of a mile, I found myself in an exact reproduction of
a Warwickshire hamlet before the days of railways and brick
chimneys. There were no elms to be sure — there were silk-
cotton trees and mangoes where the elms should have been ;
but there were the boys playing cricket, and a market house,
and a modest inn, and a shop or two, and a blacksmith's forge
with a shed where horses were standing waiting their turn to
be shod. Across the green was the parish church, with its
three aisles and low square tower, in which hung an old peal
of bells. Parish stocks I did not observe, though, perhaps, I
might have had I looked for them ; but there was a school-
house and parsonage, and, withdrawn at a distance as of su-
perior dignity, what had once perhaps been the squire's man-
sion, when squire and such-like had been the natural growth
of the country. It was as if a branch of the old tree had
been carried over and planted there ages ago, and as if it had
taken root and become an exact resemblance of the parent
stock. The people had black faces ; but even they, too, had
shaped their manners on the old English models. The men
touched their hats respectfully (as they eminently did not in
Kingston and its environs). The women smiled and curtsied,
and the children looked shy when one spoke to them. The
name of slavery is a horror to us ; but there must have been
something human and kindly about it, too, when it left upon
the character the marks of courtesy and good breeding. I wish
I could say as much for the effect of modern ideas. The ne-
groes in Mandeville were, perhaps, as happy in their old con-
dition as they have been since their glorious emancipation,
and some of them to this day speak regretfully of a time when
children did not die of neglect ; when the sick and the aged

American Guests. 247

were taken care of, and the strong and healthy were, at least,
as well looked after as their owner's cattle.

Slavery could not last ; but neither can the condition last
which has followed it. The equality between black and
white is a forced equality and not a real one, and Nature iu
the long run has her way, and readjusts in their proper rela-
tions what theorists and philanthropists have disturbed.

I was not Miss Roy's only guest. An American lady and
gentleman were staying there ; he, I believe, for his health,
as the climate of Mandeville is celebrated. Americans, what-
ever may be their faults, are always unaffected ; and so are
easy to get on with. "We dined together, and talked of the
place and its inhabitants. They had been struck like myself
with the manners of the peasants, which were something en-
tirely new to them. The lady said, and without expressing
the least disapproval, that she had fallen in with an old slave
who told her that, thanks to God, he had seen good times.
' He was bred in a good home, with a master and mistress
belonging to him. What the master and mistress had the
slaves had, and there was no difference ; and his master used
to visit at King's House, and his men were all proud of him.
Yes, glory be to God, he had seen good times.'

In the evening we sat out in the verandah in the soft sweet
air, the husband and I smoking our cigars, and the lady not
minding it. They had come to Mandeville, as we go to Italy,
to escape the New England winter. They had meant to stay
but a few days ; they found it so charming that they had
stayed for many weeks. We talked on till twilight became
night, and then appeared a show of natural pyrotechnics
which beat anything of the kind which I had ever seen or
read of : fireflies as large as cockchafers flitting round ns
among the leaves of the creepers, with two long antennae, at
the point of each of which hangs out a blazing lanthorn.
T'ic unimaginative colonists call them gig-lamps. Hud

243 The English in the West Indies.

Shakespeare ever beard of them, they would have played
round Ferdinand and Miranda in Prospero's cave, and would
have borne a fairer name. The light is bluish-green, like a
glowworm's, but immeasurably brighter ; and we could trace
them far away glancing like spirits over the meadows.

I could not wonder that my new friends had been charmed
with the place. The air was exquisitely pure ; the tempera-
ture ten degrees below that of Kingston, never oppressively
hot and never cold ; the forest scenery as beautiful as at Arden ;
and Miss Roy's provision for us, rooms, beds, breakfasts, din-
ners, absolutely without fault. If ever there was an inspired
coffee maker, Miss Roy was that person. The glory of Man-
deville is in its oranges. The worst orange I ate in Jamaica
was better than the best I ever ate in Europe, and the best
oranges of Jamaica are the oranges of Mandeville. New
York has found out their merits. One gentleman alone sent
twenty thousand boxes to New York last year, clearing a dol-
lar on each box ; and this, as 1 said just now, when Nature
is left to produce what she pleases, and art has not begun to
help her. Fortunes larger than were ever made by sugar
wait for any man, and the blessings of the world along with
it, who will set himself to_ work at orange growing with
skill and science in a place where heat will not wither
the trees, nor frosts, as in Florida, bite off the blossoms.
Yellow fever was never heard of there, nor any dangerous
epidemic, nor snake nor other poisonous reptile. The
droughts which parch the lowlands are tmknown, for an even
rain falls all the year and the soil is always moist. I inquired
with wonder why the unfortunate soldiers who were perched
among the crags at Newcastle were not at Mandeville instead.
I was told that water was the difficulty ; that there was no
river or running stream there, and that it had to be drawn
from wells or collected into cisterns. One must applaud the
caution which the authorities have at last displayed ; but

Mandeville. 240

cattle thrive at Mandeville, and sheep, and black men and
women in luxuriant abundance. One would like to know
that the general who sold the Newcastle estate to the Govern-
ment was not the same person who was allowed to report as
to the capabilities of a spot which, to the common observer,
would seem as perfectly adapted for the purpose as the other
is detestable.

A few English families were scattered about the neigh-
bourhood, among whom I made a passing acquaintance.
They had a lawn-tennis club in the village, which met once
a week ; they drove in with their pony carriages ; a lady made
tea under the trees ; they had amusements and pleasant so-
ciety which cost nothing. They were not rich ; but they
were courteous, simple, frank, and cordial.

Mandeville is the centre of a disti'ict -which all resembles
it in character and extends for many miles. It is famous for
its cattle as well as for its fruit, and has excellent grazing

grounds. Mr. , an officer of police, took me round with

him one morning. It was the old story. Though there were
still a few white proprietors left, they were growing fewer,
and the blacks were multiplying upon them. The smoke of
their clearances showed where they were at work. Many of
them are becoming well-to-do. We met them on the roads
with their carts and mules ; the young ones armed, too, in
some instances with good double-barrelled muzzle-loaders.
There is no game to shoot, but to have a gun raises them in
their own estimation, and they like to be prepared for con-
tingencies. Mr. had a troublesome place of it. The

negro peasantry were good-humoured, he said, but not uni-
versally honest. They stole cattle, and would not give evi-
dence against each other. If brought into court, they held
a pebble in their mouths, being under the impression that
when they were so provided perjury did not count. Their
education was only skin-deep, and the schools which the

250 The English in the West Indies.

Government provided had not touched their characters at
all. Mr. 's duties brought him in contact with the un-
favourable specimens. I received a far pleasanter impression
from a Moravian minister, who called on me with a friend
who had lately taken a farm. I was particularly glad to see
tins gentleman, for of the Moravians everyone had spoken
well to me. He was not the least enthusiastic about his poor
black sheep, but he said that, if they were not better than
the average English labourers, he did not think them worse.
They were called idle. They would work well enough if they
had fair wages, and if the wages were paid regularly; but
what could be expected when women servants had but three
shillings a week and ' found themselves,' when the men had
but a shilling a day and the pay was kept in arrear, in order
that, if they came late to work, or if they came irregularly, it
might be kept back or cut down to what the employer chose
to give ? Under such conditions any man of any colour
would prefer to work for himself if he had a garden, or
would be idle if he had none. ' Living ' costs nest to noth-
ing either to them or their families. But the minister said,
and his friend confirmed it by his own experience, that
these same fellows would work regularly and faithfully for
any master whom they personally knew and could rely upon,
and no Englishman coming to settle there need be afraid of
failing for want of labour, if he had sense and energy, and
did not prefer to lie down and groan. The blacks, my friends
said, were kindly-hearted, respectful, and well-disposed, but
they were children ; easily excited, easily tempted, easily mis-
led, and totally unfit for self-government. If we wished to
ruin them altogether, we should persevere in the course to
which, they were sorry to hear, we were so inclined. The
real want in the island was of intelligent Englishmen to em-
ploy and direct them, and Englishmen were going away so
fast that they feared there would soon be none of them left,

American Experiences. 251

This was the opinion of two moderate and excellent men,
whose natural and professional prejudices were all on the
black man's side.

It was confirmed both in its favourable and unfavourable
aspects by another impartial authority. My first American
acquaintances had gone, but their rooms were occupied by
another of their countrymen, a specimen of a class of whom
more will be heard in Jamaica if the fates are kind. The
English in the island cast in their lot with sugar, and if
sugar is depressed they lose heart. Americans keep their
' eyes skinned,' as they call it, to look out for other openings.
They have discovered, as I said, ' that there are dollars in
Jamaica,' and one has come, and has set up a trade in plan-
tains, in which he is making a fortune ; and this gentleman
had perceived that there were ' dollars in the bamboo, and for
bamboos there was no place in the world like the West In-
dies. He came to Jamaica, brought machines to clear the
fibre, tried to make ropes of it, to make canvas, paper, and I
know not what. I think he told me that he had spent a
quarter of a million dollars, instead of finding any, before he
hit upon a paying use for it. The bamboo fibre has certain
elastic incompressible properties in which it is without a
rival. He forms it into ' packing ' for the boxes of the
wheels of railway carriages, where it holds oil like a sponge,
never hardens, and never wears out. He sends the packing
over the world, and the demand grows as it is tried. He has
set up a factory, thirty miles from Mandeville, in the valley
of the Black River. He has a large body of the negroes
working for him who are said to be so unmanageable. He,
like Dr. Nicholls in Dominica, does not find them unmanage-
able at all. They never leave him ; they work for him from
year to year as regularly as if they were slaves. They have
their small faults, but he does not magnify them into vices.
They are attached to him with the old-fashioned affection

252 The English in the West Indies.

which good labourers always feel for employers whom they
respect, and dismissal is dreaded as the severest of punish-
ments. In the course of time he thought that they might be-
come fit for political privileges. To confer such privileges
on them at present would fling Jamaica back into absolute
barbarism.

I said I wished that more of his countrymen would come
and settle in Jamaica as he had done and a few others
already. American energy would be like new blood in the
veins of the poor island. He answered that many would
probably come if they could be satisfied that there would be
no more political experimenting ; but they would not risk
their capital if there was a chance of a black parliament.
/ If we choose to make Jamaica into a Hayti, we need not
look for Americans down that way.

Let us hope that enthusiasm for constitutions will for once
moderate its ardour. The black race has suffered enough at
our hands. They have been sacrificed to slavery ; are they
to be sacrificed again to a dream or a doctrine ? There has
a new creed risen, while the old creed is failing. It has its
priests and its prophets, its formulas and its articles of
belief.

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary
that he hold the Radical faith.

And the Radical faith is this : all men are equal, and the
voice of one is as the voice of another.

And whereas one man is wise and another foolish, and one
is upright and another crooked, yet in this suffrage none is
greater or less than another. The vote is equal, the dignity
co-eternal.

Truth is one and right is one ; yet right is right because
the majority so declare it, and justice is justice because the
majority so declare it.

The Radical Creed. 253

And if the majority affirm one thing to-day, that is right ;
and if the majority affirm the opposite to-morrow, that is
right.

Because the will of the majority is the ground of right and
there is no other, &c, &c, &c.

This is the Radical faith, which, except every man do keep
whole and undefiled, he is a Tory and an enemy of the State,
and without doubt shall perish everlastingly.

Once the Radical was a Liberal and went for toleration
and freedom of opinion. He has become a believer now.
He is right and you are wrong, and if you do not agree with
him you are a fool ; and you are wicked besides. Voltaire
says that atheism and superstition are the two poles of intel-
lectual disease. Superstition he thinks the worse of the two.
The atheist is merely mistaken, and can be cured if you show
him that he is wrong. The fanatic can never be cured. Yet
each alike, if he prevails, will destroy human society. What
would Voltaire have expected for poor mankind had he seen
both the precious qualities combined in this new Symbolum
Fidei t

A creed is not a reasoned judgment based upon experi-
ence and insight. It is a child of imagination and jxassion.
Like an organised thing, it has its appointed period and then
dies. You cannot argue it out of existence. It works for
good ; it works for evil ; but work it will while the life is in
it. Faith, we are told, is not contradictory to reason, but is
above reason. Whether reason or faith sees truer, events
will prove.

One more observation this American gentleman made to
me. He was speaking of the want of spirit and of the de-
spondency of the West Indian whites. ' I never knew, sir,'
he said, ' any good come of desponding men. If you intend
to strike a mark, you had better believe that you can strike

254 The English in the West Indies.

it. No one ever hit anything if he thought that he was most
likely to miss it. You must take a cheerful view of things,
or you will have no success in this world.'

'Tyne heart tyne a',' the Scotch proverb says. The
Anglo-West Indians are tyning heart, and that is the worst
feature about them. They can get no help except in them-
selves, and they can help themselves after all if we allow
them fair play. The Americans will not touch them politi-
cally, but they will trade with them ; they will bring their
capital and their skill and knowledge among them, and make
the islands richer and more prosperous than ever they were
I — on one condition : they will risk nothing in such enter-
i prises as long as the shadow hangs over them of a possible
j government by a black majority. Let it suffice to have
l created one Ireland without deliberately manufacturing a
second.

CHAPTER XVI.

Jamaican hospitality — Cherry Garden — George William Gordon — The
Gordon riots — Governor Eyre — A dispute and its consequences —
Jamaican country-house society — Modern speculation — A Spanish
fable — Port Royal — The commodore — Naval theatricals — The mod-
ern sailor.

The surviving representatives of the Jamaican gentry are as
hospitable as their fathers and grandfathers used to be. An
English visitor who wishes to see the island is not allowed to
take his chance at hotels — where, indeed, his chance would be
a bad one. A single acquaintance is enough to start with.
He is sent on with letters of introduction from one house to
another1, and is assured of a favourable reception. I was
treated as kindly as any stranger would be, and that was as
kindly as possible. But friends do not ask us to stay with
them that their portraits may be drawn in the traveller's jour-
nals ; and I mention no one who was thus good to me, un-
less some general interest attaches either to himself or his
residence. Such interest does, however, attach to a spot
where, after leaving Mandeville, I passed a few days. The
present owner of it was the chief manager of the Kingston
branch of the Colonial Bank : a clever accomplished man of
business, who understood the financial condition of the West
Indies better perhaps than any other man living. He was a
botanist besides ; he had a fine collection of curious plants
which were famous in the island ; and was otherwise a gentle-
man of the highest standing and reputation. His lady was
one of the old island aristocracy — high-bred, cultivated, an

256 The English in the West Indies.

accomplished artist ; a person who would have shone any
where and in any circle, and was, therefore, contented to be
herself and indifferent whether she shone or not. A visit in
such a family was likely to be instructive, and was sure to be
agreeable ; and on these grounds alone I should have accepted
gratefully the opportunity of knowing them better which they
kindly made for me by an invitation to stay with them. But
their place, which was called Cherry Garden, and which I had
seen from the grounds at Government House, had a further
importance of its own in having been the house of the un-
fortunate George William Gordon.

The disturbances with which Mr. Gordon was connected,
and for his share in which he was executed, are so recent and
so notorious that I need give no detailed account of them,
though, of course, I looked into the history again and listened
to all that I could hear about it. Though I had taken no part
in Mr. Eyre's defence, I was one of those who thought from
the first that Mr. Eyre had been unworthily sacrificed to pub-
lic clamour. Had the agitation in Jamaica spread, and taken
the form which it easily might have taken, he would have
been blamed as keenly by one half of the world if he had
done nothing to check it as he was blamed, in fact, by the
other for too much energy. Carlyle used to say that it was
as if, when a ship had been on fire, and the captain by skill
and promptitude had put the fire out, his owner were to say
to him, ' Sir, you poured too much water down the hold and
damaged the cargo.' The captain would answer, ' Yes, sir,
but I have saved your ship.' This was the view which I car-
ried with me to Jamaica, and I have brought it back with me
the same in essentials, though qualified by clearer perceptions
of the real nature of the situation.

Something of a very similar kind had happened in Natal
just before I visited that colony in 1874. I had seen the
whites there hardly recovering from a panic in which a com-

George William Gordon. 257

mon police case had been magnified by fear into the begin-
ning of an insurrection. Langalibalele, a Caffir chief within
the British dominions, had been insubordinate. He had been
sent for to Maritzberg, and had invented excuses for disobedi-
ence to a lawful order. The whites believed at once that
there was to be a general Caffir rebellion in which they would
all be murdered. They resolved to be beforehand with it.
They carried fire and sword through two considerable tribes.
At first they thought that they had covered themselves with
glory ; calmer reflection taught many of them that perhaps
they had been too hasty, and that Langalibalele had never
intended to rebel at all. The Jamaican disturbance was of a
similar kind. Mr. Gordon had given less provocation than
the Caffir chief, but the circumstances were analogous, and
the actual danger was probably greater. Jamaica had then
constitutional though not what is called responsible, govern-
ment. The executive power remained with the Crown.
There had been differences of opinion between the governor
and the Assembly. Gordon, a man of colour, was a promi-
nent member of the opposition. He had called public meetings
of the blacks in a distant part of the island, and was en-
deavouring to bring the pressure of public opinion on the
opposition side. Imprudent as such a step might have been
among an ignorant and excitable population, where whites
and blacks were so unequal in numbers, and where they knew
so little of each other, Mr. Gordon was not going beyond
what in constitutional theory he was legally entitled to do ;
nor was his language on the platform, though violent and in-
flammatory, any more so than what we listen to patiently at
home. Under a popular constitution the people are sov-
ereign ; the members of the assemblies are popular dele-
gates ; and when there is a division of opinion any man
has a right to call the constituencies to express their senti-
ments. If stones were thrown at the police and seditious

17

258 The English in the West Indies.

cries were raised, it was no more than might be reasonably
expected.

We at home can be calm on such occasions because we
know that there is no real danger, and that the law is strong
enough to assert itself. In Jamaica a few thousand white
people were living in the middle of negroes forty times their
number — once their slaves, now raised to be their political
equals— each regarding the other on the least provocation
with resentment and suspicion. In England the massacre in
Hayti is a half-forgotten story. Not one person in a thousand
of those who clamoured for the prosecution of Governor Eyre
had probably ever heard of it. In Jamaica it is ever present
in the minds of the Europeans as a frightful evidence of what
the negroes are capable when roused to frenzy. The French
planters had done nothing particularly cruel to deserve their
animosity, and were as well regarded by their slaves as ever
we had been in the English islands. Yet in a fever of politi-
cal excitement, and as a reward for the decree of the Paris
Revolutionary Government, which declared them free, they
allowed the liberty which was to have elevated them to the
white man's level to turn them into devils ; and they mas-
sacred the whole of the French inhabitants. It was inevi-
table that when the volcano in Jamaica began to show symp-
toms of similar activity the whites residing there should be
unable to look on with the calmness which we, from thousands
of miles away, unreasonably expected of them. They im-
agined their houses in flames, and themselves and their fami-
lies at the mercy of a furious mob. No personal relation
between the two races has grown up to take the place of
slavery. The white gentry have blacks for labourers, blacks
for domestic servants, yet as a rule (though, of course, there
are exceptions) they have no interest in each other, no esteem
nor confidence : therefore any symptom of agitation is certain
to produce a panic, and panic is always violent.

Governor Eyre and Gordon. 259

The blacks who attended Gordon's meetings came armed
with guns and cutlasses ; a party of white volunteers went
in consequence to watch them, and to keep order if they
showed signs of meaning insurrection. Stones were thrown ;
the Kiot Act was read, more stones followed, and then
the volunteers fired, and several persons were killed. Of
course there was fury. The black mob then actually did
rise. They marched about that particular district destroy-
ing plantations and burning houses. That they did so little,
and that the flame did not spread, was a proof that there was
no premeditation of rebellion, no prepared plan of action, no
previous communication between the different parts of the
island with a view to any common movement. There was no
proof, and there was no reason to suppose, that Gordon had
intended an armed outbreak. He would have been a fool if
he had, when constitutional agitation and the weight of num-
bers at his back would have secured him all that he wanted.
When inflammable materials are brought together, and sparks
are flying, you cannot equitably distribute the blame or the
punishment. Eyre was responsible for the safety of the isl-
and. He was not a Jamaican. The rule in the colonial ser-
vice is that a governor remains in any colony only long enough
to begin to understand it. He is then removed to another of
which he knows nothing. He is therefore absolutely depend-
ent in any difficulty upon local advice. When the riots began
every white man in Jamaica was of one opinion, that unless
the fire was stamped out promptly they would all be mur-
dered. Being without experience himself, it was very diffi-
cult for Mr. Eyre to disregard so complete a unanimity. I
suppose that a perfectly calm and determined man would
have seen in the unanimity itself the evidence of alarm and
imagination. He ought perhaps to have relied entirely on
the police and the regular troops, and to have called in the
volunteers. But here again was a difficulty ; for the police

280 The English in the West Indies.

were black, and the West India regiments were black, and
the Sepoy rebellion was fresh in everybody's memory. He
had no time to deliberate. He had to act, and to act
promptly; and if, relying on his own judgment, he had dis-
regarded what everyone round him insisted upon, and if
mischief had afterwards come of it, the censure which would
have fallen upon him would have been as severe as it would
have been deserved. He assumed that the English colonists
were right and that a general rebellion had begun. They all
armed. They formed into companies. The disturbed dis-
trict was placed under martial law, and these extemporised
regiments, too few in number to be merciful, saw safety only
in striking terror into the poor wretches. It was in Jamaica
as it was in Natal afterwards ; but we must allow for human
nature and not be hasty to blame. If the rising at Morant
Bay was but the boiling over of a pot from the oratory of an
excited patriot, there was deplorable cruelty and violence.
But, again, it was all too natural. Men do not bear easily to
see their late servants on their way to become their political
' masters, and they believe the worst of them because they are
'afraid. A model governor would have rather restrained their
ardour than encouraged it, but all that can be said against
Mr. Eyre (so far as regarded the general suppression of the
insurgents) is that he acted as nine hundred and ninety-nine
men out of a thousand would have acted in his place, and
more ought not to be expected of average colonial gov-
ernors.

His treatment of Gordon, the original cause of the disturb-
ance, was more questionable. Gordon had returned to his
own house, the house where I was going, within sight of
Eyre's windows. It would have been fair, and perhaps right,
to arrest him, and right also to bring him to trial, if he had
committed any offence for which he could be legally punished.
So strong was the feeling against him that, if every white man

Eyre and Gordon. 261

in Kingston had been empannelled, there would have been
a unanimous verdict and they would not have looked too
closely into niceties of legal construction. Unfortunately it
was doubtful whether Gordon had done anything which
could be construed into a capital crime. He had a right to
call public meetings together. He had a right to appeal to
political passions, and to indulge as freely as he pleased in the
patriotic commonplaces of platforms, provided he did not
himself advise or encourage a breach of the peace, and this it
could not easily be proved that he had done. He was, how-
ever, the leader of the opposition to the Government. The
opposition had broken into a riot, and Gordon was guilty of
having excited the feelings which led to it. The leader could
not be allowed to escape unpunished while his followers were
being shot and flogged. The Kingston district where he re-
sided was under the ordinary law. Eyre sent him into the
district which was under martial law, tried him by a military
court and hanged him.

The Cabinet at home at first thanked their representative
for having saved the island. A clamour rose, and they sent
out a commission to examine into what had happened. The
commission reported unfavourably, and Eyre was dismissed
and ruined. In Jamaica I never heard anyone express a
doubt on the full propriety of his action. He carried away
with him the affection and esteem of the whole of the English
colonists, who believe that he saved them from destruction.
In my own opinion the fault was not in Mr. Eyre, and was
not in the unfortunate Gordon, but in those who had insisted
on applying a constitutional form of government to a country
where the population is so unfavourably divided. If the
numbers of white and black were more nearly equal, the ob-
jection would be less, for the natural superiority of the white
would then assert itself without difficulty, and there would
be no panics. Where the disproportion is so enormous as it

262 The English in the West Indies.

is in Jamaica, where intelligence and property are in a mis-
erable minority, and a half-reclaimed race of savages, canni-
bals not long ago, and capable, as the state of Hayti shows,
of reverting to cannibalism again, are living beside them as
their political equals, such panics arise from the nature of
things, and will themselves cause the catastrophe from the
dread of which they spring. Mutual fear and mistrust can
lead to nothing in the end but violent collisions. The theory
of constitutional government is that the majority shall rule
the minority, and as long as the qualities, moral and mental,
of the parties are not grossly dissimilar, such an arrangement
forms a tolerable modus vivendi. Where in character, in
mental force, in energy, in cultivation, there is no equality at
all, but an inequality which has existed for thousands of
years, and is as plain to-day as it was in the Egypt of the
Pharaohs, to expect that the intelligent few will submit to
the unintelligent many is to expect what has never been
found and what never ought to be found. The whites can-
not be trusted to rule the blacks, but for the blacks to rule
the whites is a yet grosser anomaly. Were England out of
the way, there would be a war of extermination between
them. England prohibits it, and holds the balance in forced
equality. England, therefore, so long as the West Indies are
English, must herself rule, and rule impartially, and so acquit
herself of her self-chosen responsibilities. Let the colonies
which are occupied by our own race rule themselves as we
rule ourselves. The English constituencies have no rights
over the constituencies of Canada and Australia, for the
Canadians and Australians are as well able to manage their
own affairs as we are to manage ours. If they prefer even to
elect governors of their own, let them do as they please. The
link between us is community of blood and interest, and will
iiot part over details of administration. Bat in these other
colonies which are our own we must accept the facts as they

Drive to Cherry Garden. 2 &

are. Those who will not recognise realities are always bea fa
in the end.

The train from Porus brought us back to Kingston an
hour before sunset. The evening was lovely, even for Ja-
maica. The sea breeze had fallen. The land breeze had not
risen, and the dust lay harmless on road and hedge. Cherry
Garden, to which I was bound, was but seven miles distant
by the direct road, so I calculated on a delightful drive which
would bring me to my destination before dark. So I cal-
culated ; but alas ! for human expectation. I engaged a
' buggy ' at the station, with a decent-looking conductor, who
assured me that he knew the way to Cherry Garden as well
as to his own door. His horse looked starved and miserable.
He insisted that there was not another in Kingston that was
more than a match for it. We set out, and for the first two
or three miles we went on well enough, conversing amicably
upon things in general. But it so happened that it was again
market day. The road was thronged as before with women
plodding along with their baskets on their heads, a single
male on a donkey to each detachment of them, carrying noth-
ing, like an officer with a company of soldiers. Foolish in-
dignation rose in me, and I asked my friend if he was not
ashamed of seeing the poor creatures toiling so cruelly, while
their lords and masters amused themselves. I appealed to
his feelings as a man, as if it was likely that he had got any.
The wretch only laughed. ' Ah, massa,' he said, with his
tongue in his cheek, 'women do women's work, men do
men's work — all right.' 'And what is men's work?' I asked.
Instead of answering he went on, 'Look at they women,
massa — how they laugh — how happy they be ! Nobody more
happy than black woman, massa.' I would not let him
off. I pricked into him, till he got excited too, and we ar-
gued and contradicted each other, till at last the horse, find-
ing he was not attended to, went his own way and that

264: The English in the West Indies.

was a wrong one. Between Kingston and our destination
there is a deep sandy flat, overgrown with bush and pene-
trated in all directions with labyrinthine lanes. Into this we
had wandered in our quarrels, and neither of us knew where
we were. The sand was loose ; our miserable beast was
above his fetlocks in it, and was visibly dropping under his
efforts to drag us along even at a walk. The sun went down.
The tropic twilight is short. The evening star shone out in
the west, and the crescent moon over our heads. My man
said this and said that ; every word was a lie, for he had lost
his way and would not allow it. We saw a light through
some trees. I sent him to inquire. We were directed one
way and another way, every way except the right one. We
emerged at last upon a hard road of some kind. • The stars
told me the general direction. We came to cottages Avhere
the name of Cherry Garden was known, and we were told
that it was two miles off ; but, alas ! again there were two
roads to it ; a short and good one, and a long and bad
one, and they sent us by the last. There was a steep hill to
climb, for the house is 800 feet above the sea. The horse
could hardly crawl, and my ' nigger ' went to work to flog
him to let off his own ill-humour. I had to stop that by
force, and at last, as it grew too dark to see the road 'under
the trees, I got out and walked, leaving him to follow at a
foot's pace. The night was lovely. I began to think that we
should have to camp out after all, and that it would be no
great hardship.

It was like the gloaming of a June night in England, the
daylight in the open spots not entirely gone, and mixing
softly with the light of moon and planet and the flashing of
the fireflies. I plodded on mile after mile, and Cherry Gar-
den still reeeded to one mile farther. We came to a gate of
some consequence. The outline of a large mansion was visi-
ble with gardens round it. I concluded that we had arrived,

Drive to Cherry Garden. 265

and was feeling for the latch when the forms of a lady and
gentleman appeared against the sky who were strolling in the
grounds. They directed me still upwards, with the mile
which never diminished still to be travelled. Like myself,
our weary animal had gathered hopes from the sight of the
gate. He had again to drag on as he could. His owner was
subdued and silent, and obeyed whatever order I gave him.
The trees now closed over us so thick that I could see noth-
ing. Vainly I repented of my unnecessary philanthropy
which had been the cause of the mischief ; what had I to do
with black women, or white either for that matter ? I had to
feel the way with my feet and a stick. I came to a place where
the lane again divided. I tried the nearest turn. I found a
trench across it three feet deep, which had been cut by a tor-
rent. This was altogether beyond the capacity of our un-
fortunate animal, so I took the other boldly, prepared if it
proved wrong to bivouac till morning with my 'nigger,' and
go on with my argument. Happily there was no need ; we
came again on a gate which led into a field. There was a
drive across it and wire fences. Finally lights began to glim-
mer and dogs to bark : we were at the real Cherry Garden at
last, and found the whole household alarmed for what had
become of us. I could not punish my misleader by stinting
his fare, for I knew that I had only myself to blame. He
was an honest fellow after all. In the disturbance of my
mind I left a rather valuable umbrella in his buggy. He dis-
covered it after he had gone, and had grace enough to see
that it was returned to me.

My entertainers were much amused at the cause of the
misadventure, perhaps unique of its kind ; to address homi-
lies to the black people on the treatment of their wives not
being the fashion in these parts.

If there are no more Aaron Bangs in Jamaica, there are
very charming people ; as I found when I turned this new

266 The English in the West Indies.

leaf in my West Indian experience. Mr. M could not

have taken more pains with me if I had been his earliest
friend. The chief luxury which he allowed himself in his
simple life was a good supply of excellent horses. His busi-
ness took him every day to Kingston, but he left me in charge
of his family, and I had ' a good time,' as the Americans say.
The house was large, with fine airy rooms, a draught so con-
stantly blowing through it that the candles had to be cov-
ered with bell glasses ; but the draughts in these countries
are the very breath of life. It had been too dark when I ar-
rived to see anything of the surroundings, and the next morn-
ing I strolled out to see what the place was like. It lies just
at the foot of the Blue Mountains, where the gradual slope
from the sea begins to become steep. The plain of Kingston
lay stretched before me, with its woods and cornfields and
villas, the long straggling town, the ships at anchor in the
harbour, the steamers passing in and out with their long
trails of smoke, the sand-spit like a thin grey line lying upon
the water, as the natural breakwater by which the harbour
is formed, and beyond it the broad blue expanse of the Car-
ibbean Sea. The foreground was like an English park,
studded over with handsome forest trees and broken by the
rains into picturesque ravines. Some acres were planted
with oranges of the choicer sorts, as an experiment to show
what Jamaica could do, but they were as yet young and had
not come into bearing. Round the houses were gardens
where the treasures of our hothouses were carelessly and
lavishly scattered. Stephanotis trailed along the railing or
climbed over the trellis. Oleanders white and pink waved
over marble basins, and were sprinkled by the spray from
spouting fountains. Crotons stood about in tubs, not small
plants as we know them, but large shrubs ; great purple or
parti-coloured bushes. They have a fancy for crotons in the
West Indies ; I suppose as a change from the monotony of

Cherry Garden. 267

green. I cannot share it. A red leaf, except in autumn be-
fore it falls, is a kind of monster, and I am glad that Nature
has made so few of them. In the shade of the trees behind
the house was a collection of orchids, the most perfect, I be-
lieve, in the island.

And here Gordon had lived. Here he had been arrested
and carried away to his death ; his crime being that he had
dreamt of regenerating the negro race by baptising them in
the Jordan of English Radicalism. He would have brought
about nothing but confusion, and have precipitated Jamaica
prematurely into the black anarchy into which perhaps it is
still destined to fall. But to hang him was an extreme meas-
ure, and, in the present state of public opinion, a dangerous
one.

One does not associate the sons of darkness with keen per-
ceptions of the beautiful. Yet no mortal ever selected a
lovelier spot for a residence than did Gordon in choosing
Cherry Garden. How often had his round dark eyes wan-
dered over the scenes at which I was gazing, watched the
early rays of the sun slanting upwards to the high peaks of the
Blue Mountains, or the last as he sank in gold and crimson
behind the hills at Mandeville ; watched the great steamers
entering or leaving Port Royal, and at night the gleam of the
lighthouse from among the palm trees on the spit. Poor fel-
low ! one felt very sorry for him, and sorry for Mr. Eyre, too.
The only good that came of it all was the surrender of the
constitution and the return to Crown government, and this
our wonderful statesmen are beginning to undo.

No one understood better than Mr. M the troubles

and dangers of the colony, but he was inclined, perhaps by
temperament, perhaps by knowledge, to take a cheerful view
of things. For the present at least he did not think that
there was anything serious to be feared. The finances, of
which he had the best means of judging, were in tolerable

26S The English in the West Indies.

condition. The debt was considerable, but more than half
.of it was represented by a railway. If sugar was languish-
ing, the fruit trade with the United States was growing with
| the liveliest rapidity. Planters and merchants were not
making fortunes, but business went on. The shares in the
Colonial Bank were not at a high quotation, but the securi-
ties were sound, the shareholders got good dividends, and
eight and ten per cent, was the interest charged on loans.
High interest might be a good sign or a bad one. Anyway

Mr. M could not see that there was much to be afraid of

in Jamaica. There had been bad times before, and they had
survived notwithstanding. He was a man of business, and
talked himself little about politics. As it had been, so it
would be again.

In his absence at his work I found friends in the neigh-
bourhood who were all attention and politeness. One took
me to see my acquaintances at the camp again. Another
drove me about, showed me the house where Scott had lived,
the author of ' Tom Cringle.' One round in particular left a
distinct impression. It was through a forest which had once
been a flourishing sugar estate. Deep among the trees were
the ruins of an aqueduct which had brought water to the
mill, now overgrown and crumbling. The time had not been
long as we count time in the history of nations, but there
had been enough for the arches to fall in, the stream to
return to its native bed, the tropical vegetation to spring up
in its wild luxuriance and bury in shade the ruins of a past
civilisation.

I fell in with interesting persons who talked metaphysics
and theology with me, though one would not have expected
it in Jamaica. In this strange age of ours the spiritual at-
mosphere is more confused than at any period during the
last eighteen hundred years. Men's hearts are failing them
for fear, not knowing any longer where to rest. We look

Modern Scepticism. 2G9

this way and that way, and catch at one another like drown-
ing men. Go where you will, you find the same phenomena.
Science grows, and observers are adding daily to our knowl-
edge of the nature and structure of the material universe,
but they tell us nothing, and can tell us nothing, of what we
most want to know. They cannot tell us what our own nat-
ure is. They cannot tell us what God is, or what duty is.
We had a belief once, in which, as in a boat, we floated
safely on the unknown ocean ; but the philosophers and
critics have been boring holes in the timbers to examine
the texture of the wood, and now it leaks at every one of
them. We have to help ourselves in the best way that we
can. Some strike out new ideas for themselves, others go
back to the seven sages, and lay again for themselves the old
eggs, which, after laborious incubation, will be addled as
they were addled before. To my metaphysical friends in
Jamaica the ' Light of Asia ' had been shining amidst German
dreams, and the moonlight of the Vedas had been illuminat-
ing the pessimism of Schopenhauer. So it is all round.
Mr. goes to Mount Carmel to listen for communica-
tions from Elijah ; fashionable countesses to the shrine of
Our Lady at Lourdes. 'Are you a Buddhist?' lisps the
young lady in Mayfair to the partner with whom she is sit-
ting out at a ball. ' It is so nice,' said a gentleman to me
who has been since promoted to high office in an unfortunate
colony, ' it is so nice to talk of such things to pretty girls, and
it always ends in one way, you know.' Conversations on
theology, at least between persons of opposite sex, ought to
be interdicted by law for everyone under forty. But there
are questions on which old people may be permitted to ask
one another what they think, if it only be for mutual comfort
in the general vacancy. We are born alone, we pass alone
into the great darkness. When the curtain falls is the play
over? or is a new act to commence? Are we to start °£'ain

270 The English in the West Indies.

in a new sphere, carrying with us what we have gained in
the discipline of our earthly trials ? Are we to become again
as we were before we came into this world, when eternity had
not yet splintered into time, or the universal being dissolved
into individual existences ? For myself I have long ceased
to speculate on these subjects, being convinced that they
have no bottom which can be reasoned out by the intellect.
We are in a world where much can be learnt which affects
our own and others' earthly welfare, and we had better leave
the rest alone. Yet one listens and cannot choose but
sympathise when anxious souls open out to you what is going
on within them, A Spanish legend, showing with whom
these inquiries began and with what result, is not without its
value.

Jupiter, having made the world, proceeded to make animals
to live in it. The ass was the earliest created. He looked
about him. He looked at himself; and, as the habit of
asses is, he asked himself what it all meant ; what it was to
be an ass, where did he come from, and what he was for ?
Not being able to discover, he applied to his maker. Jupiter
told him that he was made to be the slave of another animal
to be called Man. He was to carry men on his back, drag
loads for them, and be their drudge. He was to live on
thistles and straw, and to be beaten continually with sticks
and ropes'-ends. The ass complained. He said that he had
done nothing to deserve so hard a fate. He had not asked
to be born, and he would rather not have been born. He in-
quired how long this life, or whatever it was, had to con-
tinue. Jupiter said it had to last thirty years. The poor ass
was in consternation. If Jupiter wrould reduce the thirty to
ten he undertook to be patient, to be a good servant, and
to do his work patiently. Jupiter reflected and consented,
and the ass retired grateful and happy.

The dog, who had been born meanwhile, heard what had

A Spanish Fable. 271

passed. He, too, went to Jupiter with the same question.
He learnt that he also was a slave to men. In the day he
was to catch their game for them, but was not to eat it him-
self. At night he was to be chained by a ring and to lie
awake to guard their houses. His food was to be boues and
refuse. Like the ass he was to have had thirty years of it,
but on petition it was similarly exchanged for ten.

The monkey came next. His function, he was told, was
to mimic humanity, to be led about by a string, and grimace
and dance for men's amusement. He also remonstrated at
the length of time, and obtained the same favour.

Last came the man himself. Conscious of boundless de-
sires and, as he imagined, of boundless capabilities, he did
not inquire what he was, or what he was to do. Those ques-
tions had been already answered by his vanity. He did not
come to ask for anything, but to thank Jupiter for having
created so glorious a being and to ascertain for how many
ages he might expect to endure. The god replied that thirty
years was the term allotted to all personal existences.

' Only thirty years ! ' he exclaimed. ' Only thirty years for
such capacities as mine. Thirty years will be gone like a
dream. Extend them ! oh, extend them, gracious Jupiter,
that I may have leisure to use the intellect which thou hast
given me, search into the secrets of nature, do great and
glorious actions, and serve and praise thee, O my creator !
longer and more worthily.'

The lip of the god curled lightly, and again he acquiesced.
' I have some spare years to dispose of,' he said, ' of which
others of my creatures have begged to be relieved. You shall
have thirty years of your own. From thirty to fifty you shall
have the ass's years, and labour and sweat for your support.
From fifty to seventy you shall have the dog's years, and take
care of the stuff, and snarl and growl at what younger men
are doing. From seventy to ninety you shall have the mon-

272 The English in the West Indies.

key's years, and smirk and grin and make yourself ridiculoua
After that you may depart.'

I was going on to Cuba. The commodore had insisted on
my spending my last days with him at Port Royal. He un-
dertook to see me on board the steamer as it passed out of
the harbour. I have already described his quarters. The
naval station has no colonial character except the climate,
and it is English entirely. The officers are the servants of
the Admiralty, not of the colonial government. Their inter-
ests are in their profession. They look to promotion in
other parts of the world, and their functions are on the
ocean and not on the land. The commodore is captain of
the guardship ; but he has a commander under him and he
resides on shore. Everyone employed in the dockyard, even
down to his own household, is rated on the ship's books, con-
sequently they are all men. There is not a woman servant
about the place, save his lady's ladies'-maid. His daughters
learn to take care of themselves, and are not brought up to
find everything done for them. His boys are about the
world in active service growing into useful and honourable
manhood.

Thus the whole life tastes of the element to which it be-
longs, and is salt and healthy as the ocean itself. It was not
without its entertainments. The officers of the garrison were
to give a ball. The young ladies of Kingston are not afraid
of the water, cross the harbour in the steam launches, dance
till the small hours, return in the dark, drive their eight or
ten miles home, and think nothing of it. In that climate,
night is pleasanter to be abroad in than day. I could not
stay to be present, but I was in the midst of the preparations,
and one afternoon there was a prospect of a brilliant addition
to the party. A yacht steamed inside the Point — long, nar-
row, and swift as a torpedo boat. She carried American

An American Yacht. 273

colours, and we heard that she was the famous vessel of the
yet more famous Mr. Vanderbilt, who was on board with his
family. Here was an excitement ! The commodore was or-
dered to call the instant that she was anchored. Invitations
were prepared— all was eagerness. Alas! she did not anchor
at all. She learnt from the pilot that, the smallpox being in
Jamaica, if any of her people landed there she would be
quarantined in the other islands, and to the disappointment
of everyone, even of myself, who would gladly have seen the
great millionaire, she turned about and went off again to sea.
I was very happy at the commodore's — low spirits not
being allowed in that wholesome element. Decks were
washed every morning as if at sea, i. e. every floor was
scrubbed and scoured. It was an eternal washing day,
lines of linen flying in the brisk sea breeze. The commo-
dore was always busy making work if none had been found
for him. He took me one day to see the rock spring where
Rodney watered his fleet, as the great admiral describes in
one of his letters, and from which Port Royal now draws its
supply. The spring itself bursts full and clear out of the
limestone rock close to the shore, four or five miles from
Kingston. There is a natural basin, slightly improved by
art, from which the old conduit pipes carry the stream to
the sea. The tug comes daily, fills its tanks, and returns.
The commodore has tidied up the place, planted shrubs,
and cleared away the bush ; but half the water at least, is
still allowed to leak away, and turns the hollow below into
an unwholesome swamp. It may be a necessity, but it is
also a misfortune, that the officers at distant stations hold
their appointments for so short a term. By the time that
they have learnt what can or ought to be done, they are sent
elsewhere, and their successor has to begin over again. The
water in this spring, part of which is now worse than wasted
and the rest carried laboriously in a vessel to Port Royal to
18

274 The English in the West Indies.

be sold by measure to the people there, might be all con-
ducted thither by pipes at small cost and trouble, were the
commodore to remain a few years longer at Port Royal.

He is his own boatman, and we had some fine sails about
the lagoon — the breeze always fresh and the surface always
smooth. The shallow bays swarm with small fish, and it was
a pretty thing to watch the pelicans devouring them. They
gather in flocks, sweep and wheel in the air, and when they
plunge they strike the water with a violence which one would
expect would break their wings. They do not dive, but
seize their prey with their long, broad bills, and seem never
to miss.

Between the ships and the barracks, there are many single
men in Port Royal, for whom amusement has to be found if
they are to be kept from drink. A canteen is provided for
them, with bowling alley, tennis court, beer in moderation,
and a reading room, for such as like it, with reviews and
magazines and newspapers. They can fish if they want
sport, and there are sharks in plenty a cable's length from
shore ; but the schoolmaster has been abroad, and tastes run
in more refined directions. The blacks of Tobago acted

' The Merchant of Venice ' before Governor S . The

ships' companies of the gunboats at Port Royal gave a con-
cert while I was there. The officers took no part, and left
the men to manage it as they pleased. The commodore
brought his party ; the garrison, the crews of the other
ships, and stray visitors came, and the large room at the can-
teen was completely full. The taste of the audience was
curious. Dibdin was off the boards altogether, and favour
was divided between the London popular comic song and
the sentimental — no longer with any flavour of salt about it,
but the sentimental spoony and sickly. ' She wore a wreath
of roses' called out the highest enthusiasm. One of the
performers recited a long poem of his own about Mary

A Sailors1 Concert. 275

Stuart, 'the lovely and unfortunate.' Then followed the
buffoonery ; and this was at least genuine rough and tumble
if there was little wit in it. A lad capered about on a tour-
nament horse which flung him every other moment. Various
persons pretended to be drunk, and talked and staggered as
drunken men do. Then there was a farce, how conceived
and by what kind of author I was puzzled to make out. A
connoisseur of art is looking for Greek antiques. He has
heard that a statue has recently been discovered of 'Ajax
quarrelling with his mother-in-law.' What Ajax was quarrel-
ling about or who his mother-in-law might be does not appear.
A couple of rogues, each unknown to the other, practise on
the connoisseur's credulity. Each promises him the statue ;
each dresses up a confederate on a pedestal with a modern
soldier's helmet and a blanket to represent a Greek hero.
The two figures are shown to him. One of them, I forget
how, contrived to pass as Ajax ; the other had turned into
Hercules doing something to the Stymphalides. At last they
get tired of standing to be looked at, jump down, and to-
gether knock over the connoisseur. Ajax then turns on
Hercules, who, of course, is ready for a row. They fight till
they are tired, and then make it up over a whisky bottle.

So entirely new an aspect of the British tar took me by
surprise, and I speculated whether the inventors and per-
formers of this astonishing drama were an advance on the
Ben Bunting type. I was, of course, inclined to say no, but
my tendency is to dislike changes, and I allow for it. The
commodore said that in certain respects there really was an
advance. The seamen fell into few scrapes, and they did not
get drunk so often. This was a hardy assertion of the com-
modore, as a good many of them were drunk at that moment.
I could see myself that they were better educated. If Ben
Bunting had been asked who Ajax and Hercules were, he
would have taken them to be three-deckers which were so

276 The English in the West Indies.

named, and his knowledge would have gone no farther.
Whether they were better sailors and braver and truer men
was another question. They understand their rights much
better, if that does any good to them. The officers used to
be treated with respect at all times and seasons. This is now
qualified. When they are on duty, the men are as respectful
as they used to be ; when they are off duty, the commodore

himself is only old H .

We returned to the dockyard in a boat under a full moon,
the guardship gleaming white in the blue midnight and the
phosphorescent water flashing under the oars. The ' Dee,'
which was to take me to Havana, was off Port Royal on the
following morning. The commodore put me on board in his
gig, with the white ensign floating over the stern. I took
leave of him with warm thanks for his own and his family's
hospitable entertainment of me. The screw went round — we
steamed away out of the harbour, and Jamaica and the kind
friends whom I had found there faded out of sight. Jamaica
was the last of the English West India Islands which I visited.
I was to see it again, but I will here set down the impressions
which had been left upon me by what I had seen there and
seen in the Antilles.

CHAPTER XVII

Present state of Jamaica — Test of progress— Resources of the island —
Political alternatives — Black supremacy and probable consequences
— The West Indian problem.

As I was stepping into the boat at Port Royal, a pamphlet
was thrust into my hand, which I was entreated to read at
my leisure. It was by some discontented white of the island
(—no rare phenomenon, and the subject of it was the precipi-
tate decline in the value of property there. The writer, un-
like the planters, insisted that the people were taxed in pro-
portion to their industry. There were taxes on mules, on
carts, on donkeys, all bearing on the small black proprietors,
whose ability to cultivate was thus checked, and who were
thus deliberately encouraged in idleness. He might have
added, although he did not, that while both in Jamaica and
Trinidad everyone is clamouring against the beetroot bounty
which artificially lowers the price of sugar, the local councils
in these two islands try to counteract the effect and artifici-
ally raise the price of sugar by an export duty on their own
produce — a singular method of doing it which, I presume,
admits of explanation. My pamphleteer was persuaded that
all the world were fools, and that he and his friends were the
only wise ones : again a not uncommon occurrence in pam-
phleteers. He demanded the suppression of absenteeism ; he
demanded free trade. In exchange for the customs duties,
which were to be abolished, he demanded a land tax— the
very mention of which, I had been told by others, drove the
black proprietors whom he wished to benefit into madness.

278 The English in the West Indies.

He wanted Home Rule. He wanted fifty things besides
which I have forgotten, but his grand want of all was a new
currency. Mankind, he thought, bad been very mad at all
periods of their history. The most significant illustration of
their madness had been the selection of gold and silver as the
medium of exchange. The true base of the currency was the
land. The Government of Jamaica was to lend to every free-
holder up to the mortgage value of his land in paper notes,
at 5 per cent, interest, the current rate being at present 8
per cent. The notes so issued, having the land as their se-
curity, would be in no danger of depreciation, and they would
flow over the sugar estates like an irrigating stream. On the
produce of sugar the fate of the island depended.

On the produce of sugar ? And why not on the produce
of a fine race of men ? The prospects of Jamaica, the pros-
pects of all countries, depend not on sugar or on any form or
degree of material wealth, but on the characters of the men
and women whom they are breeding and rearing. Where
there are men and women of a noble nature, the rest will go
well of itself ; where these are not, there will be no true
prosperity though the sugar hogsheads be raised from thou-
sands into millions. The colonies are interesting only as of-
fering homes where English people can increase and multi-
ply ; English of the old type with simple habits, who do not
need imported luxuries. There is room even in the West
Indies for hundreds of thousands of them if they can be con-
tented to lead human lives, and do not go there to make for-
tunes which they are to carry home with them. The time may
not be far off when men will be sick of making fortunes, sick
of being ground to pattern in the commonplace mill-wheel of
modern society ; sick of a state of things which blights and
kills simple and original feeling, which makes us think and
speak and act under the tyranny of general opinion, which
masquerades as liberty and means only submission to the

Capabilities. 279

newspapers. I can conceive some modern men may weary of
all this, and retire from it like the old ascetics, not as they
did into the wilderness, but behind their own walls and
hedges, shutting out the world and its noises, to inquire
whether after all they have really immortal souls, and if they
have what ought to be done about them. The West India
Islands, with their inimitable climate and soil and prickly
pears ad libitum to make fences with, would be fine places for
such recluses. Failing these ideal personages, there is work
enough of the common sort to create wholesome prosperity.
There are oranges to be grown, and pines and plantains, and
coffee and cocoa, and rice and indigo and tobacco, not to
speak of the dollars which my American Mend found in the
bamboos, and of the further dollars which other Americans
will find in the yet untested qualities of thousands of other
productions. Here are opportunities for innocent industri-
ous families, where children can be brought up to be manly
and simple and true and brave as their fathers were brought
up, as their fathers expressed it ' in the nurture and admoni-
tion of the Lord,' while such neighbours as their dark broth-
ers-in-law might have a chance of a rise in life, in the only
sense in which a ' rise ' can be of real benefit to them. These
are the objects which statesmen who have the care and con-
duct of a nation's welfare ought to set before themselves, and
unfortunately they are the last which are remembered in coun-
tries which are popularly governed. There is a clamour for
education in such countries, but education means to them
only the sharpening of the faculties for the competitive race
which is called progress. In democracies no one man is his
brother's keeper. Each lives and struggles to make his own
way and his own position. All that is insisted on is that
there shall be a fair stage and that every lad shall learn the
use of the weapons which will enable him to fight his own
way. 'Aperrj, 'manliness,' the most essential of all acquisitions

280 The English in the West Indies.

and the hardest to cultivate, as Aristotle observed long ago, is
assumed in democracies as a matter of course. Of aperi) a mod-
erate quantity (677-00-ovow) would do, and in Aristotle's opinion
this was the rock on which the Greek republics foundered.
Their dperr] did not come as a matter of course, and they lost
it, and the Macedonians and the Komans ate them up.

From this point of view political problems, and the "West
Indian among them, present unusual aspects. Looking to
the West Indies only, we took possession of those islands
when they were of supreme importance in our great wrestle
with Spain and France. We were fighting then for the liber-
ties of the human race. The Spaniards had destroyed the
original Carib and Indian inhabitants. We induced thou-
sands of our own fellow-countrymen to venture life and for-
tune in the occupation of our then vital conquests. For two
centuries we furnished them with black servants whom we
purchased on the African coast and carried over and sold
there, making our own profits out of the trade, and the colo-
nists prospered themselves and poured wealth and strength
into the empire of which they were then an integral part. A
change passed over the spirit of the age. Liberty assumed a
new dress. We found slavery to be a crime ; we released our
bondmen ; we broke their chains as we proudly described it to
ourselves ; we compensated the owners, so far as money could
compensate, for the entire dislocation of a state of society
which we had ourselves created ; and we trusted to the en-
chantment of liberty to create a better in its place. We had
delivered our own souls ; we had other colonies to take our
emigrants. Other lands under our open trade would supply
us with the commodities for which we had hitherto been de-
pendent on the West Indies. They ceased to be of commer-
cial, they ceased to be of political, moment to us, and we left
them to their own resources. The modern English idea is
that every one must take care of himself. Individuals or as?-

Theory of Colonial Management. 281

gregates of individuals have the world before them, to open
the oyster or fail to open it according to their capabilities.
The State is. not to help them ; the State is not to interfere
with them unless for political or party reasons it happens to
be convenient. As we treat ourselves we treat our colonies.
Those who have gone thither have gone of their own free will,
and must take the consequences of their own actions. We
allow them no exceptional privileges which we do not claim
for ourselves. They must stand, if they are to stand, by
their own strength. If they cannot stand they must fall.
This is our notion of education in 'manliness,' and for imme-
diate purposes answers well enough. Individual enterprise,
unendowed but unfettered, built the main buttresses of the
British colonial empire. Australians and New Zealanders
are English and Scotchmen who have settled at the antipodes
wdiere there is more room for them than at home. They are
the same people as we are, and they have the same privi-
leges as we have. They are parts of one and the same organic
body as branches from the original trunk. The branch does
not part from the trunk, but it discharges its own vital func-
tions by its own energy, and we no more desire to interfere
than London desires to interfere with Manchester.

So it stands with us where the colonists are of our race,
with the same character and the same objects ; and, as I said,
the system answers. Under no other relations could we con-
tinue a united people. But it does not answer — it has failed
wherever we have tried it — when the majority of the inhabi-
tants of countries of which for one or other reason we have
possessed ourselves, and of which we keep possession, are not
united to us by any of these natural bonds, where they have
been annexed by violence or otherwise been forced under
our flag. It has failed conspicuously in Ireland. We know
ihat it would fail in the East Indies if we were rash enough
to venture the experiment. Self-government in connection

282 The English in the West Indies.

with the British Empire implies a desire or a willingness in
those who are so left to themselves that the connection shall
continue. We have been so sanguine as to believe that the
privilege of being British subjects is itself sufficient to secure
their allegiance ; that the liberties which we concede will not
be used for purposes which we are unable to tolerate ; that,
being left to govern themselves, they will govern in harmony
with English interests and according to English principles.
The privilege is not estimated so highly. They go their own
way and not our way, and therefore we must look facts in the
face as they are, and not as we wish them to be. If we ex-
tend to Ireland the independence which only links us closer
to Australia, Ireland will use it to break away from us. If
we extend it to Bengal and Madras and Bombay, we shall
fling them into anarchy and biing our empire to an end. We
cannot for our safety's sake part with Ireland. We do not
mean to part with our Asiatic dominions. The reality of the
relation in both cases is the superior force of England, and
we must rely upon it and need not try to conceal that we do,
till by the excellence of our administration we have converted
submission into respect and respect into willingness for union.
This may be a long process and a difficult one. If we choose
to maintain our empire, however, we must pay the price for
it, and it is wiser, better, safer, in all cases to admit the
truth and act upon it. Yet Englishmen so love liberty that
they struggle against confessing what is disagreeable to
them. Many of us would give Ireland, would give India
Home Kule, and run the risk of what would happen, and
only a probability, which reaches certainty, of the conse-
quences to be expected to follow prevents us from unani-
mously agreeing. About the West Indies we do not care
very earnestly. Nothing seriously alarming can happen
there. So much, therefore, of the general policy of leaving
them to help themselves out of their difficulties we Lave

The West Indian Problem. 283

adopted completely. The corollary that they must govern
themselves also on their own responsibilities we hesitate as
yet to admit completely ; but we do not recognise that any
responsibility for their failing condition rests on us ; and the
inclination certainly, and perhaps the purpose, is to throw
them entirely upon themselves at the earliest moment. Cuba
sends representatives to the Cortes at Madrid, Martinique
and Guadaloupe to the Assembly at Paris. In the English
islands, being unwilling to govern without some semblance
of a constitution, we try tentatively varieties of local boards
and local councils, admitting the elective principle but not
daring to trust it fully ; creating hybrid constitutions, so
contrived as to provoke ill feeling where none would exist
without them, and to make impossible any tolerable govern-
ment which could actively benefit the people. We cannot
intend that arrangements the effects of which are visible so
plainly in the sinking fortunes of our own kindred there, are
to continue for ever. "We suppose that we cannot go back in
these cases. It is to be presumed, therefore, that we mean
to go forward, and in doing so I venture to think myself that
we shall be doing equal inj ustice both to our own race and to
the blacks, and we shall bring the islands into a condition
which will be a reproach and scandal to the empire of which
they will remain a dishonoured part. The slave trade was'i
an imperial monopoly, extorted by force, guaranteed by
treaties, and our white West Indian interest was built up in
connection with and in reliance upon it. We had a right to
set the slaves free ; but the payment of the indemnity was
no full acquittance of our obligations for the condition of a
society which we had ourselves created. We have no more
right to make the emancipated slave his master's master in
virtue of his numbers than we have a right to lay under the
heel of the Catholics of Ireland the Protestant minority whom
we planted there to assist us in controlling them.

284 The English in the West Indies.

It may be said that we have no intention of doing anything
of the kind, that no one at present dreams of giving a full
colonial constitution to the West Indian Islands. They are al-
lowed such freedom as they are capable of using ; they can
be allowed more as they are better educated and more fit for
it, &c, &c.

One knows all that, and one knows what it is worth in the
half-elected, half-nominated councils. Either the nominated
members are introduced merely as a drag upon the wheel,
and are instructed to yield in the end to the demands of the
representative members, or they are themselves the repre-
sentatives of the white minority. If the first, the majority
rule already ; if the second, such constitutions are contrived
ingeniously to create the largest amount of irritation, and to
make impossible, as long as they last, any form of effective
and useful government. Therefore they cannot last, and are
not meant to last. A principle once conceded develops with
the same certainty with which a seed grows when it is sown.
In the English world, as it now stands, there is no middle al-
ternative between self-government and government by the
Crown, and the cause of our reluctance to undertake direct
charge of the West Indies is because such undertaking carries
responsibility along with it. If they are brought so close to
us we shall be obliged to exert ourselves, and to rescue them
from a condition which would be a reproach to us.

The English of those islands are melting away. That is a
fact to which it is idle to try to shut our eyes. Families who
have been for generations on the soil are selling their estates
everywhere and are going off. Lands once under high culti-
vation are lapsing into jungle. Professional men of ability
and ambition carry their talents to countries where they are
more sure of reward. Every year the census renews its warn-
ing. The rate may vary ; sometimes for a year or two
there may seem to be a pause in the movement, but it begins

The West Indian Problem. 285

again and is always in the same direction. The white is rela-
tively disappearing, the black is growing ; this is the fact with
which we have to deal.

We may say if we please, ' Be it so then ; we do not want
those islands ; let the blacks have them, poor devils. They
have had wrongs enough in this world ; let them take their
turn and have a good time now.' This I imagine is the an-
swer which will rise to the lips of most of us, yet it will be an
answer which will not be for our honour, nor in the long run
for our interest. Our stronger colonies will scarcely attach
more value to their connection with us if they hear us declare
impatiently that because part of our possessions have ceased to
be of money value to us, we will not or we cannot take the trou-
ble to provide them with a decent government, and therefore
cast them off. Nor in the long run will it benefit the blacks
either. The islands will not be allowed to run wild again,
and if we leave them some one else will take them who will
be less tender of his coloured brother's sensibilities. We may
think that it would not come to that. The islands will still
be ours ; the English flag will still float over the forts ; the
government, whatever it be, will be administered in the Queen's
name. Were it worth while, one might draw a picture of the
position of an English governor, with a black parliament and
a black ministry, recommending by advice of his constitu-
tional ministers some measure like the Haytian Land Law.

No Englishman, not even a bankrupt peer, would consent
to occupy such a position ; the blacks themselves would de-
I spise him if he did ; and if the governor is to be one of their
own race and colour, how long could such a connection en-
dure?

No one I presume would advise that the whites of the island
should govern. The relations between the two populations
are too embittered, and equality once established by law, the
exclusive privilege of colour over colour cannot be restored.

286 The English in the West Indies.

While slavery continued the whites ruled effectively and eco-
nomically ; the blacks are now free as they ; there are two
classes in the community ; their interests are opposite as they
are now understood, and one cannot be trusted with control
over the other. As little can the present order of things con-
tinue. The West India Islands, once the pride of our empire,
the scene of our most brilliant achievements, are passing away
out of our hands ; the remnant of our own countrymen,
weary of an unavailing struggle, are more and more eager to
withdraw from it, because they find no sympathy and no en-
couragement from home, and are forbidden to accept help
from America when help is offered them, while under their
eyes their quondam slaves are multiplying, thriving, occupy-
ing, growing strong, and every day more conscious of the
changed order of things. One does not grudge the black man
his prosperity, his freedom, his opportunities of advancing
himself ; one would wish to see him as free and prosperous
as the fates and his own exertions can make him, with more
and more means of raising himself to the white man's level.
But left to himself, and without the white man to lead him,
he can never reach it, and if we are not to lose the islands al-
together, or if they are not to remain with us to discredit our
capacity to rule them, it is left to us only to take the same
course which we have taken in the East Indies with such mag-
nificent success, and to govern whites and blacks alike on the
Indian system. The circumstances are precisely analogous.
We have a population to deal with, the enormous majority of
whom are of an inferior race. Inferior, I am obliged to call
them, because as yet, and as a body, they have shown no
capacity to rise above the condition of their ancestors ex-
cept under European laws, European education, and Euro-
pean authority, to keep them from making war on one an-
other. They are docile, good-tempered, excellent and faith-
ful servants when they are kindly treated ; but their notions

The Indian Analogy. 287

of right and wrong are scarcely even elementary ; their edu-
cation, such as it may be, is but skin deep, and the old Afri-
can superstitions lie undisturbed at the bottom of their souls.
Give them independence, and in a few generations they will
peel off such civilisation as they have learnt as easily and as
willingly as their coats and trousers.

Govern them as we govern India, with the same conscien-
tious care, with the same sense of responsibility, with the
same impartiality, the same disinterested attention to the
well-being of our subjects in its highest and most honourable
sense, and we shall give the world one more evidence that
while Englishmen can cover the waste places of it with free
communities of their own blood, they can exert an influence
no less beneficent as the guides and rulers of those who need
their assistance, and whom fate and circumstances have as-
signed to their care. Our kindred far away will be more
than ever proud to form part of a nation which has done
more for freedom than any other nation ever did, yet is not a
slave to formulas, and can adapt its actions to the demands
of each community which belongs to it. The most timid
among us may take courage, for it would cost us nothing
save the sacrifice of a few official traditions, and an abstinence
for the future from doubtful uses of colonial patronage. The
blacks will be perfectly happy when they are satisfied that
they have nothing to fear for their persons or their proper-
ties. To the whites it would be the opening of a new era of
hope. Should they be rash enough to murmur, they might
then be justly left to the consequences of their own folly.

CHAPTER XVHL

Passage to Cuba — A Canadian commissioner — Havana — The Moro — The
city and harbour — Cuban money — American visitors — The Cathedral
—Tomb of Columbus — New friends: — The late rebellion — Slave
emancipation — Spain and progress — A bull fight.

I had gone to the West Indies to see our own colonies, but I
could not leave those famous seas which were the scene of
our ocean duels with the Spaniards without a visit to the last
of the great possessions of Philip II. which remained to his
successors. I ought not to say the last, for Puerto Rico is
Spanish also, but this small island is insignificant and has no
important memories connected with it. Puerto Rico I had
no leisure to look at and did not care about, and to see Cuba
as it ought to be seen required more time than I could afford ;
but Havana was so interesting, both from its associations and
its present condition, that I could not be within reach of it
and pass it by. The body of Columbus lies there for one thing,
unless a trick was played when the remains which were said
to be his were removed from St. Domingo, and I wished to
pay my orisons at his tomb. I wished also to see the race of
men who have shared the New World with the Anglo-Saxons,
and have given a language and a religion to half the Ameri-
can continent, in the oldest and most celebrated of their
Transatlantic cities.

Cuba also had an immediate and present interest. Before
the American civil war it was on the point of being absorbed
into the United States. The Spanish Cubans had afterwards
a civil war of their own, of which only confused accounts had

The Spaniards in America. 2S9

readied us at Lome. We knew that it had lasted ten years,
but who had been the parties and what their objects had been
was very much a mystery. No sooner was it over than, with-
out reservation or compensation, the slaves had been emanci-
pated. How a country was prospering which had undergone
such a succession of shocks, and how the Spaniards were
dealing with the trials which were bearing so hard on our
own islands, were inquiries worth making. But beyond these
it was the land of romance. Columbus and Las Casas, Cor-
tez and Pizarro. are the demigods and heroes of the New
World. Their names will be familiar to the end of time as
the founders of a new era, and although the modern Span-
iards sink to the level of the modern Greeks, their illustrious
men will hold their place for ever in imagination and mem-
ory.

Our own Antilles had, as I have said, in their terror of
smallpox, placed Jamaica under an interdict. The Spaniards
at Cuba were more generous or more careless. Havana is on
the north side of the island, facing towards Florida ; thus,
in going to it from Port Royal, we had to round the western-
most cape, and had four days of sea before us. We slid
along the coast of Jamaica in smooth water, the air, while
day lasted, intensely hot, but the breeze after nightfall blow-
ing cool from off the mountains. We had a polite captain,
polite officers, and agreeable fellow-passengers, two or three
Cubans among them, swarthy, dark-eyed, thick-set men —
Americanos ; Spaniards with a difference — with whom I culti-
vated a kind of intimacy. In a cabin it was reported that
there were again Spanish ladies on their way to the demonic
gaieties at Dorien, but they did not show.

Among the rest of the party was a Canadian gentleman,

a Mr. , exceptionally well-informed and intelligent. Their

American treaty having been disallowed, the West Indies had
proposed to negotiate a similar one with the Canadian Do-
10

290 The English in the West Indies.

minion. The authorities at Ottawa had sent Mr. M to see

if anything could be done, and Mr. M was now on his

way home, not in the best of humours with our poor relations.
■ The Jamaicans did not know what they wanted,' he said.
' They were without spirit to help themselves ; they cried out
to others to help them, and if all they asked could not be
granted they clamoured as if the whole world was combining
to hurt them. There was not the least occasion for these pas-
sionate appeals to the universe ; they could not at this moment
perhaps " go ahead " as fast as some countries, but there was
no necessity to be always going ahead. They had a fine coun-
try, soil and climate all that could be desired, they had all
that was required for a quiet and easy life, why could they
not be contented and make the best of things ? ' Unfortunate
Jamaicans ! The old mother at home acts like an unnatural
parent, and will neither help them nor let their Cousin Jona-
than help them. They turn for comfort to their big brother
in the north, and the big brother being himself robust and
healthy, gives them wholesome advice.

Adventures do occasionally happen at sea even in this age
of steam engines. Ships catch fire or run into each other, or
go on rocks in fogs, or are caught in hurricanes, and Nature
can still assume her old terrors if she pleases. Shelley de-
scribes a wreck on the coast of Cornwall, and the treacherous
waters of the ocean in the English Channel, now wild in fury,
now smiling

As on the morn
When the exulting elements in scorn
Satiated with destroyed destruction lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep.

The wildest gale which ever blew on British shores was a
mere summer breeze compared to a West Indian tornado.
Behind all that beauty there lies the temper and caprice,

Havana. 291

not of a panther, but of a woman. But no tornados fell in
our way, nor anything else worth mentioning, not even a
buccaneer or a pirate. We saw the islands which these gen-
try haunted, and the headlands made memorable by their
desperate deeds, but they are gone, even to the remembrance
of them. What they were and what they did lies buried
away in book mausoleums like Egyptian mummies, all as
clean forgotten as if they had been honest men, they and all
the wild scenes which these green estuaries had witnessed.

Havana figures much in English naval history. Drake
tried to take it and failed ; Penn and Venables failed. We
stormed the forts in 17G0, and held them and held the city
till the Seven Years' War was over. I had read descriptions
of the place, but they had given me no clear conception of
what it would be like, certainly none at all of what it was
like. Kingston is the best of our West Indian towns, and
Kingston has not one fine building in it. Havana is a city of
palaces, a city of streets and plazas, of colonnades, and towers
and churches and monasteries. We English have built in
those islands as if we were but passing visitors, wanting only
tenements to be occupied for a time. The Spaniards built as
they built in Castile ; built with the same material, the white
limestone which they found in the New World as in the Old.
The palaces of the nobles in Havana, the residence of the gov-
ernor, the convents, the cathedral, are a reproduction of
Burgos or Valladolid, as if by some Aladdin's lanrp a Castil-
ian city had been taken up and set clown again unaltered on
the shore of the Caribbean Sea. And they carried with them
their laws, their habits, their institutions and their creed,
their religious orders, their bishops, and their Inquisition.
Even now in her day of eclipse, when her genius is clouded
by the modern spirit against which she fought so long and
so desperately , the sons of Spain still build as they used to
build, and the modern squares and market places, the castles

292 The English in the West Indies.

and fortresses, which have risen in and round the ancient
Havana, are constructed on the old massive model, and on
the same lines. However it may be with us, and whatever
the eventual fate of Cuba, the Spanish race has taken root
there, and is visibly destined to remain. They have poured
their own people into it. In Cuba alone there are ten times
as many Spaniards as there are English and Scotch in all our
West Indies together, and Havana is ten times the size of the
largest of our West Indian cities. Refugees have flocked
thither from the revolution in the Peninsula. The Canary
Islands overflow into it. You know the people from Teneriffe
by their stature ; they are the finest surviving specimens of
the old conquering breed. The political future is dark ; the
government is unimaginably corrupt — so corrupt that change
is inevitable, though what change it would be idle to proph-
esy. The Americans looked at the island which lay so tempt-
ingly near them, but they were wise in their generation.
They reflected that to introduce into an Anglo-Saxon repub-
lic so insoluble an element as . a million Spanish Roman
Catholics alien in blood and creed, with half a million blacks
to swell the dusky flood which runs too full among them
already, would be to invite an indigestion of serious conse-
quence. A few years since the Cubans born were on the eve
of achieving their independence like their brothers in Mexico
and South America. Perhaps they will yet succeed. Span-
ish, at any rate, they are to the bone and marrow, and Span-
ish they will continue. The magnitude of Havana, and the
fullness of life which was going on there, entirely surprised
me. I had thought of Cuba as a decrepit state, bankrupt or
finance exhausted by civil wars, and on the edge of social
dissolution, and I found Havana at least a grand imposing
city — a city which might compare for beauty with any in the
world. The sanitary condition is as bad as negligence can
make it — so bad that a Spanish gentleman told me that if it

The Moro. 293

were not for the natural purity of the air they would have
been all dead like flies long ago. The tideless harbour is
foul with the accumulations of three hundred years. The
administration is more good-for-nothing than in Spain itself.
If, in spite of this, Havana still sits like a queen upon the
waters, there are some qualities to be found among her peo-
ple which belonged to the countrymen and subjects of Fer-
dinand the Catholic.

The coast line from Cape Tiburon has none of the grand
aspects of the Antilles or Jamaica. Instead of mountains
and forests you see a series of undulating hills, cultivated
with tolerable care, and sprinkled with farm-houses. All the
more imposing, therefore, from the absence of marked nat-
ural forms, are the walls and towers of the great Moro, the
fortress which defends the entrance of the harbour. Ten
miles off it was already a striking object. As we ran nearer
it rose above us stern, proud, and defiant, upon a rock right
above the water, with high frowning bastions, the lighthouse
at an angle of it, and the Spanish banner floating proudly
from a turret which overlooked the whole. The Moro as a
fortification is, I am told, indefensible against modern artil-
lery, presenting too much surface as a target ; but it is all
the grander to look at. It is a fine specimen of the Vauban
period, and is probably equal to any demands which will be
made upon it. The harbour is something like Port Royal, a
deep lagoon with a narrow entrance and a long natural break-
water between the lagoon and the ocean ; but what at Port
Royal is a sand spit eight miles long, is at Havana a rocky
peninsula on which the city itself is built. The opening from
the sea is half a mile wide. On the city side there are low
semicircular batteries which sweep completely the approaches
and the passage itself. The Moro rises opposite at the ex-
treme point of the entrance, and next to it, farther in towards
the harbour on the same side, on the crest and slopes of a

294 The English in the West Indies.

range of hills, stands the old Moro, the original castle which
heat off Drake and Oliver's sea-generals, and which was capt-
ured by the English in the last century. The lines were
probably weaker than they are at present, and less adequately
manned. A monument is erected there to the officers and
men who fell in the defence.

The city as we steamed by looked singularly beautiful, with
its domes and steeples and marble palaces, and glimpses of
long boulevards and trees and handsome mansions and cool
arcades. Inside we found ourselves in a basin, perhaps of
three miles diameter, full of shipping of all sorts and nation-
alities. The water, which outside is pure as sapphire, has
become filthy with the pollutions of a dozen generations.
The tide, which even at the springs has but a rise and fall of
a couple of feet, is totally ineffective to clear it, and as long
as they have the Virgin Mary to pray to, the pious Spaniards
will not drive their sewage into the ocean. The hot sun rays
stream down into the thick black liquid. Horrible smells
are let loose from it when it is set in motion by screw or
paddle, and ships bring up at mooring buoys lest their an-
chors should disturb the compost which lies at the bottom.
Yet one forgot the disagreeables in the novelty and striking
character of the scene. A hundred boats were plying to and
fro among the various vessels, with their white sails and white
awnings. Flags of all countries were blowing out at stern or
from masthead ; among them, of course, the stars and stripes
flying jauntily on some splendid schooner which stood there
like a cock upon a dunghill that might be his own if he chose
to crow for it.

As soon as we had brought up we were boarded by the
inevitable hotel touters, custom-house officers, porters, and
boatmen. Interpreters offered their services in the confusion
of languages. Gradually there emerged out of the general
noise two facts of importance. First, that I ought to have

Landing Embarrassments. 295

had a passport, and if I had not brought one that I was likely
to he fined at the discretion of Spanish officials. Secondly,
that if I trusted to my own powers of self-defence, I should
be the victim of indefinite other extortions. Passport I had
none — such things are not required any longer in Spain, and
it had not occurred to me that they might still be in demand
in a Spanish colony. As to being cheated, no one could or
would tell me what I was to pay for anything, for there were
American dollars, Spanish dollars, Mexican dollars, and Cuban
dollars, all different and with fractions of each. And there
were multiples of dollars in gold, and single dollars in silver,
and last and most important of all there was the Cuban paper
dollar, which was 230 per cent, below the value of the Cuban
gold dollar. And in this last the smaller transactions of com-
mon life were carried on, the practical part of it to a stranger
being that when you had to receive you received in paper, and
when you had to pay you paid in specie.

I escaped for the time the penalty which would have been
inflicted on me about the passport. I had a letter of intro-
duction to the Captain-General of the island, and the Cap tain-
General — so the viceroy is called — was so formidable a per-
son that the officials did not venture to meddle with me.
For the rest I was told that as soon as I had chosen my
hotel, the agent, who was on board, would see me through all
obstructions, and would not allow me to be plundered by any-
one but himself. To this I had to submit. I named an hotel
at random ; a polite gentleman in a few moments had a boat
alongside for rne ; I had stept into it when the fair damsels
bound for Darien, who had been concealed all this time in
their cabin, slipped down the ladder and took their places at
my side, to the no small entertainment of the friends whom
I had left on board and who were watching us from the deck.

At the wharf I was able to shake off my companions, and I
soon forgot the misadventure, for I found myself in Old Cas-

296 The English in the West Indies.

tile once more, amidst Spanish faces, Spanish voices, Spanish
smells, and Spanish scenes. On the very wharf itself was a
church grim and stern, and so massive that it would stand,
barring earthquakes, for a thousand years. Church, indeed,
it was no longer ; it had been turned into a custom-house.
But this was because it had been desecrated when we were in
Havana by having an English service performed in it. They
had churches enough without it, and they preferred to leave
this one with a mark upon it of the anger of the Almighty.
Of churches, indeed, there was no lack ; churches thick as
public-houses in a Welsh town. Church beyond church,
palace beyond palace, the narrow streets where neighbours
on either side might shake hands out of the upper stories,
the deep colonnades, the private houses with the win-
dows grated towards the street, with glimpses through the
street door into the court and garden within, with its cloisters,
its palm trees, and its fountains ; the massiveness of the
stonework, the curious old-fashioned bookstalls, the dirt, the
smell, the carriages, the swearing drivers, the black-robed
priest gliding along the footway — it was Toledo or Valladolid
again with the sign manual on it of Spain herself in friendly
and familiar form. Every face that I saw was Spanish. In
Kingston or Port of Spain you meet fifty blacks for one
European ; all the manual work is done by them. In Havana
the proportion is reversed, you hardly see a coloured man at
all. Boatmen, porters, cab-drivers or cart-drivers, every one
of whom are negroes in our islands, are there Spaniards, either
Cuban born or emigrants from home. A few black beggars
there were — permitted, as objects of charity to pious Catholics
and as a sign of their inferiority of race. Of poverty among
the whites, real poverty that could be felt, I saw no sign at
all.

After driving for about a mile we emerged out of the old
town into a large square and thence into a wide Alameda or

American Visitors. 297

boulevard with double avenues of trees, statues, fountains,
theatres, clubhouses, and all the various equipments of mod-
ern luxuriousness and so-called civilised life. Beyond the
Alameda was another still larger square, one side of which
was a railway station and terminus. In a colonnade at right
angles was the hotel to which I had been recommended ;
spacious, handsome, in style half Parisian half Spanish, like
the Fondas in the Puerto del Sol at Madrid.

Spanish was the language generally spoken ; but there
were interpreters and waiters more or less accomplished in
other tongues, especially in English, of which they heard
enough, for I found Havana to be the winter resort of our
American cousins, who go, generally, to Cuba as we go to the
Riviera, to escape the ice and winds of the eastern and middle
States. This particular hotel was a favourite resort, and was
full to overflowing with them. It was large, with an interior
quadrangular garden, into which looked tiers of windows ; and
wings had been thrown out with terraced roofs, suites of
rooms opening out upon them ; each floor being provided
with airy sitting rooms and music rooms. Here were to be
heard at least a hundred American voices discussing the ex-
periences and plans of their owners. The men lounged in
the hall or at the bar, or sat smoking on the rows of leather
chairs under the colonnade, or were under the hands of bar-
bers or haircutters in an airy open saloon devoted to these
uses. When I retreated upstairs to collect myself, a lady was
making the corridors ring close by as she screamed at a piano
in the middle of an admiring and criticising crowd. Dear as
the Americans are to me, and welcome in most places as is
the sound of those same sweet voices, one had not come to
Havana for this. It was necessary to escape somewhere, and
promptly, from the discord of noises which I hoped might be
due to some momentary accident. The mail company's agent,
Mr. R , lived in the hotel. He kindly found me out, in-

298 The English in the West Indies.

itiated me in the mysteries of Cuban paper money, and giv-
ing me a tariff of the fares, found me a cab, and sent me out
to look about me.

My first object was the cathedral and the tomb of Colum-
bus. In Catholic cities in Europe churches stand always
open ; the passer-by can enter when he pleases, fall on his
knees and say his silent prayers to his Master whom he sees
on the altar. In Havana I discovered afterward that, except
at special hours, and those as few as might be, the doors
were kept locked and could only be opened by a golden key.
It was carnival time, however ; there were functions going on
of various kinds, and 1 found the cathedral happily accessible.
It was a vast building, little ornamented, but the general
forms severe and impressive, in the style of the time of
Philip II., when Gothic art had gone out in Spain and there
had come in the place of it the implacable sternness which
expresses the very genius of the Inquisition. A broad flight
of stone steps led up to the great door. The afternoon was
extremely hot ; the curtains were thrown back to admit as
much air as possible. There was some function proceeding
of a peculiar kind. I know not what it was ; something cer-
tainly in which the public had no interest, for there was not
a stranger present but myself. But the great cathedral offi-
cials were busy at work, and liked to be at their ease. On
the wall as you entered a box invited contributions, as limosna
por el Santo Padre. The service was I know not what. In
the middle of the nave stood twelve large chairs arranged in
a semicircle ; on these chairs sat twelve canons, like a row of
mandarins, each with his little white patch like a silver dollar
on the crown of his black head. Five or six minor dignita-
ries, deacons, precentors, or something of that sort, were
droning out monotonous recitations like the buzzing of so
many humble bees in the warm summer air. The dean or
provost sat in the central biggest chair of all. His face was

The Tomb of Columbus. 299

rosy, and lie wiped it from time to time with a red handker-
chief ; his chin was double or perhaps treble ; he had evi-
dently dined, and would or might have slept but for a pile
of snuff on his chair arm, with continual refreshments from
which he kept his faculties alive. I sat patiently till it was
over, and the twelve holy men rose and went their way. I
could then stroll about at leisure. The pictures were of the
usual paltry kind. On the chancel arch stood the royal arms
of Spain, as the lion and the unicorn used to stand in our
parish churches till the High Church clergy mistook them
for Erastian wild beasts. At the right side of the altar was
the monument which I had come in search of ; a marble tab-
let fixed against the wall, and on it a poorly executed figure
in hmh relief, with a ruff about its neck and features which
might be meant for anyone and for no one in particular.
Somewhere near me there were lying I believed and could
hope the mortal remains of the discoverer of the New World.
An inscription said so. There was written :

O Restos j Imagen del grande Colon
Mil siglos durad guardados en la Urna
Y en remenibranza de nuestra Nacion.

The court poet, or whoever wrote the lines, was as poor an
artist in verse as the sculptor in stone. The image of the
grande Colon is certainly not ' guarded in the urn,' since you
see it on the wall before your eyes. The urn, if urn there be,
with the 'relics' in it, must be under the floor. Columbus
and his brother Diego were originally buried to the right and
left of the altar in the cathedral of St. Domingo. When St.
Domingo was abandoned, a commission was appointed to re-
move the body of Christophe to Havana. They did remove a
body, but St. Domingo insists that it was Diego that was
taken away, that Christophe remains where he was, and that
if Spain wants him Spain must pay for him. I followed the

300 The English in the West Indies.

canons into the sacristy where they were unrobing. I did
not venture to address either of themselves, hut I asked an
acolyte if he could throw any light upon the matter. He
assured me that there neither was nor could have been any
mistake. They had the right body and were in no doubt
about it. In more pious ages disputes of this sort were set-
tled by an appeal to miracles. Eival pretenders for the pos-
session of the same bones came, however, at last to be able to
produce authentic proofs of miracles which had been worked
at more than one of the pretended shrines ; so that it was
concluded that saints' relics were like the loaves and fishes,
capable of multiplication without losing their identity, and of
having the property of being in several places at the same
moment. The same thing has been alleged of the Holy Coat
of Treves and of the wood of the true cross. Havana and St.
Domingo may perhaps eventually find a similar solution of
their disagreement over the resting place of Columbus.

I walked back to my hotel up a narrow shady street like a
long arcade. Here were the principal shops ; several libra-
ries among them, into which I strayed to gossip and to look
over the shelves. That so many persons could get a living
by bookselling implied a reading population, but the book?
themselves did not indicate any present literary products
ness. They were chiefly old, and from the Old World, and
belonged probably to persons who had been concerned in
the late rebellion and whose property had been confiscated.
They were absurdly cheap ; I bought a copy of Guzman de
Alfarache for a few pence.

I had brought letters of introduction to several distin-
guished people in Havana ; to one especially, Don Gr , a

member of a noble Peninsular family, once an officer in the
Spanish navy, now chairman of a railway company and head
of an important commercial house. His elder brother, the
Marques de , called on me on the evening of the day of

Cuban Friends. 301

my arrival ; a distinguished-looking man of forty or there-
abouts, with courteous high-bred manners, rapid, prompt,
and incisive, with the air of a soldier, which in early life he
had been. He had travelled, spoke various languages, and

spoke to me in admirable English. Don G , who might

be a year or two younger, came later and stayed an hour and
a half with me. Let me acknowledge here, and in as warm
language as I can express it, the obligations under which I
stand to him, not for the personal attentions only which he
showed me during my stay in Havana, but for giving me an
opportunity of becoming acquainted with a real specimen of
Plato's superior men, who were now and then, so Plato said,
to be met with in foreign travel. It is to him that I owe any
knowledge which I brought away with me of the present
state of Cuba. He had seen much, thought much, read much.
He was on a level with the latest phases of philosophical and
spiritual speculation, could talk of Darwin and Spencer, of
Schopenhauer, of Strauss, and of Kenan, aware of what they
had done, aware of the inconvenient truths which they had
forced into light, but aware also that they had left the most
important questions pretty much where they found them. He
had taken no part in the political troubles of the late years
in Cuba, but he had observed everything. No one knew better
the defects of the present system of government ; no one was
less ready to rush into hasty schemes for violently mending it.
The ten years' rebellion, of which I had heard so much
and knew so little, he first made intelligible to me. Cuba
had been governed as a province of Spain, and Spain, like
other mother countries, had thought more of drawing a reve-
nue out of it for herself than of the interests of the colony.
Spanish officials had been avaricious, and Spanish fiscal
policy oppressive and ruinous. The resources of the island
in metals, in minerals, in agriculture were as yet hardly
scratched, yet every attempt to develop them was paralysed

302 The English in the West Indies.

by fresh taxation. The rebellion had been an effort of the
Cuban Spaniards, precisely analogous to the revolt of our
own North American colonies, to shake off the authority of
the court of Madrid and to make themselves independent.
They had fought desperately and had for several years been
masters of half the island. They had counted on help from
the United States, and at one time they seemed likely to get
it. But the Americans could not see their way to admitting
Cuba into the "Union, and without such a prospect did not care
to quarrel with Spain on their account. Finding that they
were to be left to themselves, the insurgents came to terms
and Spanish authority was re-established. Families had been
divided, sons taking one side and fathers the other, as in our
English Wars of the Roses, perhaps for the same reason, to
save the family estates whichever side came out victorious.
The blacks had been indifferent, the rebellion having no in-
terest for them at all. They had remained by their masters,
and they had been rewarded after the peace by complete
emancipation. There was not a slave now in Cuba. No in-
demnity had been granted to their owners, nor had any been
asked for, and the business on the plantations had gone on
without interruption. Those who had been slaves continued
to work at the same locations, receiving wages instead of
food and maintenance ; all were satisfied at the change, and
this remarkable revolution had been carried out with an ease
and completeness which found no parallel in any other slave-
owning country.

In spite of rebellion, in spite of the breaking up and re-
construction of the social system, in spite of the indifferent
administration of justice, in spite of taxation, and the inex-
plicable appropriations of the revenue, Cuba was still moder-
ately prosperous, and that it could flourish at all after trials
so severe was the best evidence of the greatness of its natural
wealth. The party of insurrection was dissolved, and would

Political Trials. 303

revive again only under the unlikely contingency of encour-
agement from the United States. There was a party, how-
ever, which desired for Cuba a constitution like the Canadian
— Home Rule and the management of its own affairs — and as
the black element was far outnumbered and under control,
such a constitution would not be politically dangerous.

If the Spanish Government does not mend its ways, con-
cessions of this kind may eventually have to be made, though
the improvement to be expected from it is doubtful. Offi-
cial corruption is engrained in the character and habits of the
Spanish people. Judges allowed their decisions to be 'influ-
enced ' under Philip III. as much as to-day in the colonies of
Queen Christina ; and when a fault is the habit of a people,
it survives political reforms and any number of turnings of
the kaleidoscope.

The encouraging feature is the success of emancipation.
There is no jealousy, no race animosity, no supercilious con-
tempt of whites for ' niggers.' The Spaniards have inherited
a tinge of colour themselves from their African ancestors,
and thus they are all friends together. The liberated slave
can acquire and own land if he wishes for it, but as a rule he
prefers to work for wages. These happy conditions arise in
part from the Spanish temperament, but chiefly from the nu-
merical preponderance of the white element, which, as in the
United States, is too secure to be uneasy. The black is not
encouraged in insubordination by a sense that he could win
in a contest of strength, and the aspect of things is far more
promising for the future than in our own islands. The Span-
iards, however inferior we may think them to ourselves, have
filled their colonies with their own people and are reaping
the reward of it. We have so contrived that such English as
had settled in the West Indies on their own account are leav-
ing them.

Spain, four centuries ago, was the greatest of European na-

304 The English in the West Indies.

tions, the first in art, or second only to Italy, the first in
arms, the first in the men whom she produced. She has
been swept along in the current of time. She fought against
the stream of tendency, and the stream proved too strong for
her, great as she was. The modern spirit, which she would
not have when it came in the shape of the Reformation, has
flowed over her borders as revolution, not to her benefit, for
she is unable to assimilate the new ideas. The old Spain of
the Inquisition is gone ; the Spain of to-day is divided be-
tween Liberalism and Catholic belief. She is sick in the proc-
ess of the change, and neither she nor her colonies stand any
longer in the front lines in the race of civilization ; yet the
print of her foot is stamped on the New World in characters
which will not be effaced, and may be found to be as endur-
ing as our own.

The colony is perhaps in advance of the mother country.

The Catholic Church, Don G said, has little influence in

Cuba ; ' she has had no rival,' he explained, ' and so has
grown lazy.' I judged the same from my own observations.
The churches on Sundays were thinly attended, and men
smiled when I asked them about ' confession.' I inquired
about famous preachers. I was told that there was no preach-
ing in Havana, famous or otherwise. I might if I was lucky
and chose to go there in the early morning, hear a sermon
in the church of the Jesuits ; that was all. I went ; I heard
my Jesuit, who was fluent, eloquent, and gesticulating, but
he was pouring out his passionate rhetoric to about fifty
women with scarcely a man amongst them. It was piteous
to look at him. The Catholic Church, whether it be for want
of rivals, or merely from force of time, has fallen from its
high estate. It can burn no more heretics, for it has lost the
art to raise conviction to sufficient intensity. The power to
burn was the measure of the real belief which people had in
the Church and its doctrines. The power has departed with

The Church in Cuba. 305

tlie waning of faith ; and religion in Havana, as in Madrid,
is but ' use and wont ; ' not ' belief ' but opinion, and opinion
which is half insincere. Nothing else can take its place.
The day is too late for Protestantism, which has developed
iuto wider forms, and in the matter of satisfied and complete
religious conviction Protestants are hardly better off than
Catholics.

Don G had been much in Spain ; he was acquainted

with many of the descendants of the old aristocracy, who
linger there in faded grandeur. He had studied the history
of his own country. He compared the Spain and England
of the sixteenth century with the Spain and England of the
present ; and, like most of us, he knew where the yoke galled
his own neck. But economical and political prosperity is no
exhaustive measure of human progress. The Pome of Tra-
jan was immeasurably more splendid than the Pome of the
Scipios ; yet the progress had been downwards nevertheless.
If the object of our existence on this planet is the develop-
ment of character, if the culminating point in any nation's
history be that at which it produces its noblest and bravest
men, facts do not tend to assure us that the triumphant
march of the last hundred years is accomplishing much in

that direction, I found myself arguing with Don G

that if Charles V. and Philip II. were to come back to this
world, and to see whither the movement had brought us of
which they had worked so hard to suppress the beginning,
they would still say that they had done right in trying to
strangle it. The Reformation called itself a protest against
lies, and the advocates of it imagined that when the lies, or
what they called such, were cleared away, the pure metal of
Christianity would remain unsullied. The great men who
fought against the movement, Charles V. in his cabinet and
Erasmus in his closet, had seen that it could not rest there ;
that it was the cradle of a revolution in which the whole
20

306 The English in the West Indies.

spiritual and political organisation of Europe would be flung
into the crucible. Under that organisation human nature
had ascended to altitudes of chivalry, of self-sacrifice, which
it had never before reached. The sixteenth century was the
blossoming time of the Old World, and no such men had ap-
peared since as then came to the front, either in Spain or
Italy, or Germany or France or England. The actual leaders
of the Reformation had been bred in the system which they
destroyed. Puritanism and Calvinism produced men of
powerful character, but they Avere limited and incapable of
continuance ; and now the liberty which was demanded had
become what their instinct had told them from the first must
be the final shape of it, a revolution which would tolerate no
inequalities of culture or position, which insisted that no
man was better than another, which was to exalt the low and
bring down the high till all mankind should stand upon a
common level — a level, not of baseness or badness, but a
level of good-humoured, smart, vulgar and vulgarising
mediocrity, with melodrama for tragedy, farce for comedy,
sounding speech for statesmanlike wisdom ; and for a creed,
when our fathers thought that we had been made a little
lower than the angels, the more modest knowledge that we
were only a little higher than the apes. This was the aspect
in which the world of the nineteenth century would appear
to Sir Thomas More or the Duka of Alva. From the Grand
Captain to Sefior Castelar, from Lord Burghley to Mr. Glad-
stone, from Leonardo da Vinci or Velasquez to Gustave
Dore, from Cervantes and Shakespeare to ' Pickwick ' and the
' Innocents at Home ; ' from the faith which built the cathe-
drals to evolution and the survival of the fittest ; from the
carving and architecture of the Middle Ages to the workman-
ship of the modern contractor ; the change in the spiritual
department of things had been the same along tbe whole
line. The great Emperor, after seeing all that has been

Thoughts on Progress. 307

achieved, the railways, the steam engines, the telegraphs, the
Yankee and his United States, which are the embodiment of
the highest aspirations of the modern era, after attending
a session of the British Association itself, and seeing the
bishops holding out their hands to science which had done
such great things for them, might fairly claim that it was a
doubtful point whether the change had been really for the
better.

It may be answered, and answered truly, that the old thing
was dead. The Catholic faith, where it was left standing and
where it still stands, produces now nothing higher, nothing
better than the Protestant. Human systems grow as trees
grow. The seed shoots up, the trunk forms, the branches
spread ; leaves and flowers and fruit come out year after year
as if they were able to renew themselves for ever. But that
which has a beginning has an end, that which has life must
die when the vital force is exhausted. The faith of More, as
well as the faith of Ken or Wilson, were elevating and enno-
bling as long as they were sincerely believed, but the time
came when they became clouded with uncertainty ; and con-
fused, perplexed, and honestly anxious, humanity struggles
on as well as it can, all things considered, respectably enough,
in its chrysalis condition, the old wings gone, the new wings
that are to be (if we are ever to have another set) as yet im-
prisoned in their sheath.

The same Sunday morning when I went in search of my
sermon, the hotel was alive as bees at swarming time. There
was to be a bull fight in honour of the carnival, and such a bull
fight as had never been seen in Havana. Placards on the
wall announced that a lady from Spain, Gloriana they called
her, was to meet and slay a bull in single combat, and every-
one must go and see the wonderful sight. I myself, having
seen the real thing in Madrid many years ago, felt no more
curiosity, and that a woman should be an actress in such a

308 The English in the West Indies.

scene did not revive it. To those who went the performance
was a disappointment. The bull provided turned out to be a
calf of tender years. The spectators insisted that they would
have a beast full of strength and ferocity, and Gloriana when
brought to the point declined the adventure.

There was a prettier scene in the evening. In the cool
after nightfall the beauty and fashion of Havana turns out to
stroll in the illuminated Alameda. As it was now a high fes-
tival the band was to play, and the crowd was as dense as on
Exhibition nights at South Kensington. The music was
equally good, and the women as graceful and well dressed. I
sat for an hour or two listening under the statue of poor
Queen Isabella. The image of her still stands where it was
placed, though revolution has long shaken her from her throne.
All is forgotten now except that she was once a Spanish sov-
ereign, and time and distance have deodorised her memory.

CHAPTEE XIX.

Hotels in Havana— Sights in the city — Cigar manufactories — West Ind-
ian industries — The Captain-General — The Jesuit college — Father
Vifiez — Ciubs in Havana — Spanish aristocracy — Sea lodging house.

There was much to be seen in Havana, and much to think
about. I regretted only that I had not been better advised
in my choice of an hotel. The dining saloon rang with
American voices in their shrillest tones. Every table was oc-
cupied by groups of them, nor was there a sound in the room
of any language but theirs. In the whole company I had
not a single acquaintance. I have liked well almost every in-
dividual American that I have fallen in with and come to
know. They are frank, friendly, open, and absolutely unaf-
fected, and, like my friend at Miss Roy's in Jamaica, they
take cheerful views of life, which is the highest of all recom-
mendations. The distinctness and sharpness of utterance is
tolerable and even agreeable in conversation with a single per-
son. "When a large number of them are together, all talking
in a high tone, it tries the nerves and sets the teeth on edge.
Nor could I escape from them in any part of the building.
The gentlemen were talking politics in the hall, or lounging
under the colonnade. One of them, an absolute stranger,
who perhaps knew who I was, asked me abruptly for my
opinion of Cardinal Newman. The ladies filled the sitting-
rooms ; their pianos and their duets pierced the walls of my
bedroom, and only ceased an hour after midnight. At five in
the morning the engines began to scream at the adjoining
railway station. The church bells woke at the same hour

310 The English in the West Indies.

with their superfluous summons to matins which no one at-
tended. Sleep was next to an impossibility under these
hard conditions, and I wanted more and not less of it when I
had the duties upon me of sightseeing. Sleep or no sleep,
however, I determined that I would see what I could as long
as I could keep going.

A few hundred yards off was one of the most famous of the
Havana cigar manufactories. A courteous message from the
manager, Senor Bances, had informed me that he would be
happy to show me over it on any morning before the sun was
above the roofs of the houses. I found the senor a handsome
elderly gentleman, tall and lean, with Castilian dignity of man-
ner, free and frank in all his communications, with no reserve,
concealments, or insincerities. I told him that in my experi-
ence cigars were not what they had been, that the last good
one which I had smoked I had bought twrenty years ago from
a contrabandista at Madrid. I had come to Havana to see
whether I could find another equally good at the fountain
head. He said that he was not at all surprised. It was the
same story as at Jamaica ; the consumption of cigars had in-
creased with extreme rapidity, the area on which the finest
tobacco had been grown was limited, and the expense of grow-
ing it was very great. Only a small quantity of the best
cigars was now made for the market. In general the plants
were heavily manured, and the flavour suffered. Leaf of
coarse fibre was used for the core of the cigars, with only a
fold or two wrapped round it of more delicate quality. He
took me into the different rooms where the manufacture was
going on. In the first were perhaps a hundred or a hundred
and fifty sallow-faced young men engaged in rolling. They
were all Cubans or Spaniards with the exception of a single
negro ; and all, I should think, under thirty. On each of the
tables was one of the names with which we have grown famil-
iar in modern cigar shops, Reynas, Regalias, Principes, and

Cigar Manufactories. 311

I know not how many else. The difference of material could
not be great, but there was a real difference in the fineness
of the make, and in the quality of the exterior leaf. The
Avorkmen were of unequal capacity and were uuequally paid.
The senor employed in all about 1,400 ; at least so I under-
stood him.

The black field hands had eighteenpence a day. The rollers
were paid by quality and quantity ; a good workman doing
his best could earn sixty dollars a week, an idle and indiffer-
ent one about twelve. They smoked as they rolled, and there
was no check upon the consumption, the loss in this way be-
ing estimated at 40,000 dollars a year. The pay was high ;
but there was another side to it — the occupation was danger-
ous. If there were no old men in the room, there were no
boys. Those who undertook it died often in two or three
years. Doubtless with precaution the mortality might be
diminished ; but, like the needle and scissor grinders in Eng-
land, the men themselves do not wish it to be diminished.
The risk enters into the wages, and they prefer a short life
and a merry one.

The cigarettes, of which the varieties are as many as there
are of cigars, were made exclusively by Chinese. The second
room which we entered was full of them, their curious yellow
faces mildly bending over their tobacco heaps. Of these
there may have been a hundred. Of the general expenses of
the establishment I do not venture to say anything, bewil-
dered as I was in the labyrinthine complication of the cur-
rency, but it must certainly be enormous, and this house, the
Partagas, was but one of many equally extensive in Havana
alone.

The senor was most liberal. He filled my pockets with
packets of excellent cigarettes ; he gave me a bundle of cigars.
I cannot say whether they were equal to what I bought from
my contraband ida, for these may have been idealised bv a

312 The English in the West Indies.

grateful memory, but they were so incomparably better than
any which I have been able to get in London that I was
tempted to deal with him, and so far I have had no reason to
repent. The boxes with which he provided me bettered the
sample, and the price, duty at home included, was a third
below what I should have paid in London for an article which
I would rather leave unconsumed. A broker whom I fell in
with insisted to me that the best cigars all went to London,
that my preference for what I got from my seiior was mere
fancy and vanity, and that I could buy better in any shop in
Regent Street. I said that he might but I couldn't, and so
we left it.

I tell all this, not with the affectation of supposing that
tobacco or my own taste about it can have any interest, but
as an illustration of what can be done in the West Indies,
and to show how immense a form of industry waits to be
developed in our own islands, if people with capital and
knowledge choose to set about it. Tobacco as good as the
best in Cuba has been grown and can be grown in Jamaica,
in St. Domingo, and probably in every one of the Antilles.
'There are dollars in those islands,' as my Yankee said, and
many a buried treasure will be brought to light there when
capitalists can feel assured that they will not be at the mercy
of black constitutional governments.

My letter of introduction to the Captain-General was still
undelivered, and as I had made use of it on landing I thought
it right at least to pay my respects to the great man. The

Marques M kindly consented to go with me and help me

through the interview, being of course acquainted with him.
He was at his country house, a mile out of the town. The
buildings are all good in Havana. It was what it called itself,
not a palace but a handsome country residence in the middle
of a large well-kept garden. The viceroyalty has a fair but
not extravagant income attached to it. The Captain-General

The Captain- General. 313

receives about 8,0007. a year besides allowances. Were the
balls and dinners expected of Lira which our poor governors
are obliged to entertain their subjects with, he would not be
able to make much out of it. The large fortunes which used
to be brought back by the fortunate Captains-General who
could connive at the slave trade were no longer attainable ;
those good days are gone. Public opinion therefore permits
them to save their incomes. The Spaniards are not a hospi-
table people, or rather their notion of hospitality differs in
form from ours. They are ready to dine with you them-
selves as often as you will ask them. Nothing in the shape
of dinners is looked for from the Captain-General, and when
I as a stranger suggested the possibility of such a thing hap-
pening to me, my companion assured me that I need not be
in the least alarmed. We were introduced into a well-pro-
portioned hall, with a few marble busts in it and casts of
Greek and Roman statues. Aides-de-camp and general offi-
cers were lounging about, with whom we exchanged distant
civilities. After waiting for a quarter of an hour we were
summoned by an official into an adjoining room and found
ourselves in his Excellency's presence. He was a small gen-
tlemanlike-looking man, out of uniform, in plain morning
dress with a silk sash. He received us with natural polite-
ness ; cordiality was uncalled for, but he was perfectly gra-
cious. He expressed his pleasure at seeing me in the island ;
he hoped that I should enjoy myself, and on his part would
do everything in his power to make my stay agreeable. He
spoke of the emancipation of the slaves and of the social state
of the island with pardonable satisfaction, inquired about our
own West Indies, &c, and finally asked me to tell him in
what way he could be of service to me. I told him that I
had found such kind friends in Havana already, that I could
think of little. One thing only he could do if he pleased. I
had omitted to bring a passport with me, not knowing that

314 The English in the West Indies.

it would be required. My position was irregular and might
be inconvenient. I was indebted to my letter of introduc-
tion to his Excellency for admission into his dominions.
Perhaps he would write a few words which would enable me
to remain in them and go out of them when my visit was
over. His Excellency said that he would instruct the Go-
bierno Civil to see to it, an instruction the meaning of which
I too sadly understood. I was not to be allowed to escape
the fine. A fresh shower followed of polite words, and with
these we took ourselves away.

The afternoon was spent more instructively, perhaps more

agreeably, in a different scene. The Marques M had

been a pupil of the Jesuits. He had personal friends in the
Jesuit college at Havana, especially one, Father Vifiez, whose
name is familiar to students of meteorological science, and
who has supplemented and corrected the accepted law of
storms by careful observation of West Indian hurricanes.
The Jesuits were as well sj)oken of in Havana as the Mora-
vians in Jamaica. Everyone had a good word for them.
They alone, as I have said, took the trouble to provide the
good people there with a sermon on Sundays. The}T alone
among the Catholic clergy, though they live poorly and have
no endowment, exert themselves to provide a tolerable edu-
cation for the middle and upper classes. The Marques under-
took that if we called we should be graciously received, and
I was curious and interested. Their college had been an
enormous monastery. Wherever the Spaniards wTent they
took an army of monks with them of all the orders. The
monks contrived always to house themselves handsomeiy.
While soldiers fought and settlers planted, the monks' duty
was to pray. In process of time it came to be doubted
whether the monks' prayers were worth what they cost, or
whether, in fact, they had ever had much effect of any kind.
They have been suppressed in Spain ; they have been clipped

Tfie Jesuit College. 315

short in all the Spanish dominions, and in Havana there are
now left only a handful of Dominicans, a few nuns, and these
Jesuits, who have taken possession of the largest of the con-
vents, much as a soldier-crab becomes the vigorous tenant of
the shell of some lazy sea-snail. They have a college there
where there are four hundred lads and young men who pay
for their education ; some hundreds more are taken out of
charity. The Jesuits conduct the whole, and do it all nn-
aided, on their own resources. And this is far from all that
they do. They keep on a level with the age ; they are men
of learning ; they are men of science ; they are the Royal
Society of Cuba. They have an observatory in the college,
and the Father Vifiez of whom I have spoken is in charge of
it. Father Vinez was our particular object. The porter's
lodge opened into a courtyard like the quadrangle of a col-
lege at Oxford. From the courtyard we turned into a nar-
row staircase, up which we climbed till we reached the roof,
on and under which the Father had his lodgings and his ob-
serving machinery. We entered a small room, plainly fur-
nished with a table and a few uncushioned chairs ; table and
chairs, all save the Father's, littered with books and papers.
Cases stood round the wall, containing self-registering in-
struments of the most advanced modern type, each with its
paper barrel unrolling slowly under clockwork, while a pen-
cil noted upon it the temperature of the air, the atmospheric
pressure, the degree of moisture, the ozone, the electricity.
In the middle, surrounded by his tools and his ticking clocks,
sat the Father, middle-aged, lean and dry, with shrivelled skin
and brown and threadbare frock. He received my companion
with a warm affectionate smile. The Marques told him that I
was an Englishman who was curious about the work in which
he was engaged, and he spoke to me at once with the polite-
ness of a man of sense. After a few questions asked and an-
swered, he took us out to a shed among the roof-tiles, where he

316 The English in the West Indies.

kept his large telescope, his equatorial, and his transit instru-
ments— not on the great scale of State-supported observato-
ries, but with everything which was really essential. He had a
laboratory, too, and a workshop, with all the recent appliances.
He was a practical optician and mechanic. He managed and
repaired his own machinery, observed, made his notes, and
wrote his reports to the societies with which he was in corre-
spondence, all by himself. The outfit of such an establish-
ment, even on a moderate scale, is expensive. I said I sup-
posed that the Government gave him a grant. ' So far from
it,' he said, - that we have to pay a duty on every instrument
which we import.' 'Who, then, pays for it all?' I asked.
' The order,' he answered, quite simply.

The house, I believe, was a gift, though it cost the State
nothing, having been simply seized when the monks were ex-
pelled. The order now maintains it, and more than repays
the Government for their single act of generosity. At my
companion's suggestion Father Viiiez gave me a copy of his
book on hurricanes. It contains a record of laborious jour-
neys which he made to the scene of the devastations of the
last ten years. The scientific value of the Father's work is
recognised by the highest authorities, though I cannot vent-
ure even to attempt to explain what he has done. He then
conducted us over the building, and showed us the libraries,
dormitories, playgrounds, and all the other arrangements
which were made for the sudents. Of these we saw none.
They were all out, but the long tables in the -refectory were
laid for afternoon tea. There was a cup of milk for each lad,
with a plate of honey and a roll of bread ; and supper would
follow in the evening. The sleeping gallery was divided into
cells, open at the top for ventilation, with bed, table, chest of
drawers, and washing apparatus — all scrupulously clean. So
far as I could judge, the Fathers cared more for the boys'
comfort than for their own. Through an open door our con-

Clubs in Havana. 317

ductor faintly indicated the apartment which belonged to
himself. Four bare walls, a bare tiled floor, a plain pallet,
with a crucifix above the pillow, was all that it contained.
There was no parade of ecclesiasticism. The libraries were
well furnished, but the books were chiefly secular and scien-
tific. The chapel was unornamented ; there were a few pict-
ures, but they were simple and inoffensive. Everything was
good of its kind, down to the gymnastic courts and swimming
bath. The holiness was kept in the background. It was in
the spirit and not in the body. The cost of the whole estab-
lishment was defrayed out of the payments of the richer stu-
dents managed economically for the benefit of the rest, with
complete indifference on the part of the Fathers to indul-
gence and pleasures of their own. As we took leave the Mar-
ques kissed his old master's brown hand. I rather envied
him the privilege.

Something I saw of Havana society in the received sense of
the word. There are many clubs there, and high play in
most of them, for the Cubans are given to the roulette tables.
The Union Club, which is the most distinguished among
them, invites occasional strangers staying in the city to tem-
porary membership as we do at the Athenseum. Here you
meet Spanish grandes, who have come to Cuba to be out of
reach of revolution, proud as ever and not as poor as you
might expect ; and when you ask who they are you hear the
great familiar names of Spanish history. I was introduced to
the president — young, handsome, and accomplished. I was
startled to learn that he was the head of the old house of
Sandoval. The house of Columbus ought to be there also,
for there is still a Christophe Colon, the direct linear repre-
sentative of the discoverer, disguised under the title of the
Duque de Veragua. A perpetual pension of 20,000 dollars a
year was granted to the great Christophe and his heirs for
ever as a charge on the Cuban revenue. It has been paid to

318 The English in the West Indies.

the family through all changes of dynasty and forms of govern-
ment, and is paid to them still. But the Duque resides in
Spain, and the present occupation of him, I was informed, is
the breeding and raising bulls for the Plaza de Toros at Seville.
Thus, every way, my stay was made agreeable to me.
There were breakfasts and dinners and introductions. Don

G and his brother were not fine gentlemen only, but

were men of business and deeply engaged in the active life
of the place. The American consul was a conspicuous figure
at these entertainments. America may not find it her inter-
est to annex these islands, but since she ordered the French
out of Mexico, and the French obeyed, she is universally felt
on that side of the Atlantic to be the supreme arbiter of all
their fates. Her consuls are thus persons of consequence.
The Cubans like the Americans well. The commercial treaty
which was offered to our islands by the United States would
have been eagerly accepted by the Spaniards. To them,
however, the Americans have as yet not been equally liberal.
They say that they have hills of solid iron in the island and
mountains of copper with 50 per cent, of virgin copper in
them waiting for the Americans to develop, and likely I sup-
pose to wait a little longer. The present administration
would swallow up in taxation the profits of the most promis-
ing enterprise that ever was undertaken, but the metals are
there, and will come one day into working. The consul was
a swift peremptory man who knew his own mind at any rate.
Between his 'Yes, sir,' and his 'No, sir,' you were at no
loss for his meaning. He told me a story of a 'nigger' of-
ficer with whom he had once got into conversation at Hayti.
He had inquired why they let so fine an island run to waste ?
Why did they not cultivate it? The dusky soldier laid his
hand upon his breast and waved his hand. ' Ah,' he said,
' that might do for English or Germans or Franks ; we of
the Latin race have higher things to occupy us.'

Vedado. 319

I liked the consul well. I could not say as much for his
countrymen and countrywomen at my hotel. Individually I
dare say they would have been charming ; collectively they
drove me to distraction. Space and time had no existence
for them ; they and their voices were heard in all places and
at all hours. The midnight bravuras at the pianos mixed

wildly in my broken dreams. The Marques M wished to

take me with him to his country seat and show me his sugar
plantations. Nothing could have been more delightful, but
with waut of sleep and the constant racket I found myself
becoming unwell. In youth and strength one can defy the
foul fiend and bid him do his worst ; in age one finds it
wiser to get out of the way.

On the sea, seven miles from Havana, and connected with
it by a convenient railway, at a place called Vedado, I found
a lodging house kept by a Frenchman (the best cook in Cuba)
with a German wife. The situation was so attractive, and the
owners of it so attentive, that quiet people went often into
' retreat ' there. There were delicious rooms, airy and soli-
tary as I could wish. The sea washed the coral rock under
the windows. There were walks wild as if there was no city
within a thousand miles — up the banks of lonely rivers, over
open moors, or among inclosures where there were large
farming establishments with cattle and horses and exten-
sive stables and sheds. There was a village and a harbour
where fishing people kept their boats and went out daily
with their nets and lines — blacks and whites living and
working side by side. I could go where I pleased without
fear of interference or question. Only I was warned to be
careful of the dogs, large and dangerous, descendants of the
f.unous Cuban bloodhounds, which are kept everywhere to
guard the yards and houses. They were really danger-
ous, and had to be avoided. The shore was of inex-
haustible interest. It was a level shelf of coral rock extend-

320 The English in the West Indies.

ing for many miles and littered over with shells and coral
branches which had been flung up by the surf. I had hoped
for bathing. In the open water it is not to be thought of on
account of the sharks, but baths have been cut in the rock all
along that part of the coast at intervals of half a mile ; deep
square basins with tunnels connecting them with the sea, up
which the waves run clear and foaming. They are within in-
closures, roofed over to keep out the sun, and with attend-
ants regularly present. Art and nature combined never made
more charming pools ; the water clear as sapphire, aerated by
the constant inrush of the foaming breakers, and so warm that
you could lie in it without a chill for hours Alas ! that I
could but look at them and execrate the precious Government
which forbade me their use. So severe a tax is laid on these
bathing establishments that the owners can only afford to keep
them open during the three hottest months in the year, when
the demand is greatest.

In the evenings people from Havana would occasionally
come down to dine as we go to Greenwich, being attracted
partly by the air and partly by my host's reputation. There
was a long verandah under which tables were laid out, and
there were few nights on which one or more parties were not
to be seen there. Thus I encountered several curious speci-
mens of Cuban humanity, and on one of my runs up to Ha-
vana I met again the cigar broker who had so roughly chal-
lenged my judgment. He was an original and rather divert-
ing man ; I should think a Jew. Whatever he was he fell
upon me again and asked me scornfully whether I supposed
that the cigars which I had bought of Sefior Bances were
anything out of the way. I said that they suited my taste
and that was enough. 'Ah,' he replied, ' Cadet loco con su
tenia. Every fool had his opinion.' ' I am the loco (idiot),
then,' said I, ' but that again is matter of opinion.' He spoke
of Cuba and professed to know all about it. ' Can you tell

Visitors at Vedado. 321

me, then,' said I, ' why the Cubans hate the Spaniards ? '
' Why do the Irish hate the English ? ' he answered. I said
it was not an analogous case. Cubans and Spaniards were of
the same breed and of the same creed. ' That is nothing,' lie
replied ; ' the Americans will have them both before long.' I
said I thought the Americans were . too wise to meddle with
either. If they did, however, I imagined that on our own
side of the Atlantic we should have something to sa}T on the
subject before Ireland was taken from us. He laughed good-
humouredly. ' Is it possible, sir,' he said, ' that you live in
England and are so absolutely ignorant?' I laughed too.
He was a strange creature, and would have made an excellent
character in a novel.

Don G or his brother came down occasionally to see

how I was getting on and to talk philosophy and history.
Other gentlemen came, and the favourite subject of conversa-
tion was Spanish administration. One of them told me this
story as an illustration of it. His father was the chief part-
ner in a bank ; a clerk absconded, taking 50,000 dollars with
him. He had been himself sent in pursuit of the man, over-
took him with the money still in his possession, and recovered
it. With this he ought to have been contented, but he tried
to have the offender punished. The clerk replied to the
criminal charge by a counter-charge against the house. It
was absurd in itself, but he found that a suit would grow out
of it which would swallow more than the 50,000 dollars, and
finally he bribed the judge to allow him to drop the prosecu-
tion. Cosas de Espana ; it lies in the breed. Guzman de Al-
farache was robbed of his baggage by a friend. The facts
were clear, the thief was caught with Guzman's clothes on his
back ; but he had influential friends — he was acquitted. He
prosecuted Guzman for a false accusation, got a judgment and
ruined him.

The question was, whether if the Cubans could make them-
21

322 The English in the West Indies.

selves independent there would be much improvement. The
want in Cuba just now, as in a good many other places, is the
want of some practical religion which insists on moral duty.
A learned English judge was trying a case one day, when
there seemed some doubt about the religious condition of one
of the witnesses. The clerk of the court retired with him to
ascertain what it really was, and returned radiant almost im-
mediately, saying, 'All right, my lord. Knows he'll be
damned — competent witness — knows he'll be damned.' That
is really the whole of the matter. If a man is convinced that
if he does wrong he will infallibly be punished for it he has
then ' a saving faith.' This, unfortunately, is precisely the
conviction which modern forms of religion produce hardly
anywhei'e. The Cubans are Catholics, and hear mass and
go to confession ; but confession and the mass between
them are enough for- the consciences of most of them, and
those who think are under the influence of the modern
spirit, to which all things are doubtful. Some find com-
fort in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Some regard Christianity
as a myth or poem, which had passed in unconscious good
faith into the mind of mankind, and there might have re-
mained undisturbed as a beneficent superstition had not
Protestantism sprung up and insisted on flinging away
everything which was not literal and historical fact. His-
torical fact had really no more to do with it than with
the stories of Prometheus or the siege of Troy. The end
was that no bottom of fact could be found, and we were all
set drifting.

Notably too I observed among serious people there, what I
have observed in other places, the visible relief with which
they begin to look forward to extinction after death. When
the authority is shaken on which the belief in a future life
rests, the question inevitably recurs. Men used to pretend
that the idea of annihilation was horrible to them ; now

The Cemetery. 323

they regard the probability of it with calmness, if not with
actual satisfaction. One very interesting Cuban gentleman
said to me that life would be very tolerable if one was cer-
tain that death would be the end of it. The theologi-
cal alternatives were equally unattractive ; Tartarus was an
eternity of misery, and the Elysian Fields an eternity of
ennui.

There is affectation in the talk of men, and one never knows
from what they say exactly what is in their mind. I have
often thought that the real character of a people shows itself
nowhere with more unconscious completeness than in their
cemeteries. Philosophise as we may, few of us are deliber-
ately insincere in the presence of death ; and in the arrange-
ments which we make for the reception of those who have
been dear to us, and in the lines which we inscribe upon their
monuments, we show what we are in ourselves perhaps more
than what they were whom we commemorate. The parish
churchyard is an emblem and epitome of English country
life ; London reflects itself in Brompton and Ken sal Green,
and Paris in Pere la Chaise. One day as I was walking I
found myself at the gate of the great suburban cemetery of
Havana. It was inclosed within high walls ; the gateway was
a vast arch of pink marble, beautiful and elaborately carved.
Within there was a garden simply and gracefully laid out
with trees and shrubs and flowers in borders. The whole
space inclosed may have been ten acres, of which half was
assigned to those who were contented with a mere mound of
earth to mark where they lay ; the rest was divided into
family vaults covered with large white marble slabs, sep-
arate headstones marking individuals for whom a particular
record was required, and each group bearing the name
of the family the members of which were sleepiug there.
The peculiarity of the place was the absence of inscrip-
tions. There was a name and date, with E. P. D. — 'en

324 The English in the West Indies.

paz descansa " — or E. G. E. — cen gracia esta,'2 — and that
seemed all that was needed. The virtues of the departed
and the grief of the survivors were taken for granted in
all but two instances. There may have been more, but I
could find only these.
One was in Latin :

AD CCELITES EVOCAT.E UXOEI EXIMLE IGNATIUS.

Ignatius to his admirable wife who has been called up to heaven.

The other was in Spanish verse, and struck me as a graceful
imitation of the old manner of Cervantes and Lope De Vega.
The design on the monument was of a girl hanging an im-
mortelle upon a cross. The tomb was of a Caridad del Monte,
and the lines were :

Bendita Caridad, las que piadosa
Su mano vierte en la f unerea losa
Son flores recogidas en el snelo,
Mas con su olor perf umarrin el cielo.

It is dangerous for anyone to whom a language is only
moderately familiar to attempt an appreciation of elegiac
poetry, the effect of which, like the fragrance of a violet, must
rather be perceived than accounted for. He may imagine
what is not there, for a single word ill placed or ill chosen
may spoil the charm, and of this a foreigner can never en-
tirely judge. He may know what each word means, but he
cannot know the associations of it. Here, however, is a trans-
lation in which the sense is preserved, though the aroma is
gone.

The flowers which thou, oh blessed Charity,
With pious hand hast twined in funeral wreath,
Although on earthly soil they gathered be,
Will sweeten heaven with their perfumed breath.

1 He rests iu peace. 2 He is now in grace.

An American Bishoj?. 325

The flowers, I suppose, were the actions of Caridad's own
innocent life, which she was offering on the cross of Christ ;
but one never can be sure that one has caught the exact sen-
timent of emotional verse in a foreign language. The beauty
lies in an undefinable sweetness which rises from the melody
of the words, and in a translation disappears altogether.
Who or what Caridad del Monte was, whether a young girl
whom somebody had loved, or an allegoric and emblematic
figure, I had no one to tell me.

I must not omit one acquaintance which I was fortunate
enough to make while staying at my seaside lodging. There
appeared there one day, driven out of Havana like myself by
the noise, an American ecclesiastic with a friend who ad-
dressed him as ' My lord.' By the ring and purple, as well
as by the title, I perceived that he was a bishop. His friend
was his chaplain, and from their voices I gathered that they
were both by extraction Irish. The bishop had what is called
a ' clergyman's throat,' and had come from the States in
search of a warmer climate. They kept entirely to them-
selves, but from the laughter and good- humour they were
evidently excellent company for one another, and wanted no
other. I rather wished than hoped that accident might in-
troduce me to them. Even in Cuba the weather is uncertain.
One day there came a high wind from the sea ; the waves
roared superbly upon the rocks, flying over them in rolling
cataracts. I never saw foam so purely white or waves so
transparent. As a spectacle it was beautiful, and the shore
became a museum of coralline curiosities. Indoors the ef-
fect was less agreeable. Windows rattled and shutters broke
from their fastenings and flew to and fro. The weathercock
on the house-top creaked as he was whirled about, and the
verandahs had to be closed, and the noise was like a pro-
longed thunder peal. The second day the wind became a
cyclone, and chilly as if it came from the pole. None of us

326 The English in the West Indies.

could stir out. The bishop suffered even more than I did ;
he walked up and down on the sheltered side of the house
wrapped in a huge episcopalian cloak. I think he saw that I
was sorry for him, as I really was. He spoke to me ; he said
he had felt the cold less in America when the thermometer
marked 25° below zero. It was not much, but the silence
was broken. Common suffering made a kind of link between
us. After this he dropped an occasional gracious word as he
passed, and one morning he came and sat by me and began
to talk on subjects of extreme interest. Chiefly he insisted
on the rights of conscience and the tenderness for liberty of
thought which had always been shown by the Church of
Rome. He had been led to speak of it by the education
question which has now become a burning one in the Ameri-
can Union. The Church, he said, never had interfered, and
never could or would interfere, with any man's conscientious
scruples. Its own scruples, therefore, ought to be respected.
The American State schools were irreligious, and Catholic
parents were unwilling to allow their children to attend
them. They had established schools of their own, and they
supported them by subscriptions among themselves. In
these schools the boys and girls learnt everything which
they could learn in the State schools, and they learnt to be
virtuous besides. They were thus discharging to the full
every duty which the State could claim of them, and the
State had no right to tax them in addition for the main-
tenance of institutions of which they made no use, and of
the principles of which they disapproved. There were now
eight millions of Catholics in the Union. In more than one
state they had an actual majority ; and they intended to
insist that as long as their children came up to the present
educational standard, they should no longer be compelled
to pay a second education tax to the Government. The
struggle, he admitted, would be a severe one, but the Cath-

Iff ' Iff I ':!

An American Bishop. 327

olics had justice on their side, and would fight on till they
won.

In democracies the majority is to prevail, and if the con-
trol of education falls within the province of each separate
state government, it is not easy to see on what ground the
Americans will be able to resist, or how there can be a strug-
gle at all where the Catholic vote is really the largest. The
presence of the Catholic Church in a democracy is the real
anomaly. The principle of the Church is authority resting
on a divine commission ; the principle of democracy is the
will of the people ; and the Church in the long run will have
as hard a battle to fight with the divine right of the majority
of numbers as she had with the divine right of the Hohen-
stauffens and the Plantagenets. She is adroit in adapting
herself to circumstances, and, like her emblem the fish, she
changes her colour with that of the element in which she
swims. No doubt she has a strong position in this demand
and will know how to use it.

But I was surprised to hear even a Catholic bishop insist
that his Church had always paid so much respect to the rights
of conscience. I had been taught to believe that in the days
of its power the Church had not been particularly tender
towards differences of opinion. Fire and sword had been
used freely enough as long as fire and sword were available.
I hinted my astonishment. The bishop said the Church had
been slandered ; the Church had never in a single instance
punished any man merely for conscientious error. Protest-
ants had falsified history. Protestants read their histor-
ies, Catholics read theirs, and the Catholic version was the
true one. The separate governments of Europe had no
doubt been cruel. In France, Spain, the Low Countries,
even in England, heretics had been harshly dealt with, but
it was the governments that had burnt and massacred all
those people, not the Church. The governments were

328 The English in the West Indies.

afraid of heresy because it led to revolution. The Church
had never shed any blood at all ; the Church could not,
for she was forbidden to do so by her own canons. If she
found a man obstinate in unbelief, she cut him off from the
communion and handed him over to the secular arm. If
the secular arm thought fit to kill him, the Church's hands
were clear of it.

So Pilate washed his hands ; so the judge might say he
never hanged a murderer ; the execution was the work of the
hangman. The bishop defied me to produce an instance in
which in Rome, when the temporal power was with the pope
and the civil magistrates were churchmen, there had ever
been an execution for heresy. I mentioned Giordano Bruno,
whom the bishop had forgotten ; but we agreed not to quar-
rel, and I could not admire sufficiently the hardihood and
the ingenuity of his argument. The English bishops and
abbots passed through parliament the Act de hceretico com-
burendo, but they were acting as politicians, not as church-
men. The Spanish Inquisition burnt freely and success-
fully. The inquisitors were archbishops and bishops, but
the Holy Office was a function of the State. "When Gregory
XIII. struck his medal in commemoration of the massacre
of St. Bartholomew he was then only the secular ruler of
Rome, and therefore fallible and subject to sin like other
mortals.

The Church has many parts to play ; her stage wardrobe
is well furnished, and her actors so well instructed in their
parts that they believe themselves in all that they say. The
bishop was speaking no more than his exact conviction. He
told me that in the Middle Ages secular princes were bound
by their coronation oath to accept the pope as the arbiter of
all quarrels between them. I asked where this oath was, or
what were the terms of it ? The words, he said, were unim-
portant. The fact was certain, and down to the fatal schism

An American Bishop. 329

of the sixteenth century the pope had always been allowed
to arbitrate, and quarrels had been prevented. I could but
listen and wonder. He admitted that he had read one set
of books and I another, as it was clear that he must have
done.

In the midst of our differences we found we had many
points of agreement. "We agreed that the breaking down
of Church authority at the Reformation had been a fatal
disaster ; that without a sense of responsibility to a super-
natural power, human beings would sink into ingenious
apes, that human society would become no more than a
congregation of apes, and that with differences of opinion
and belief, that sense was becoming more and more ob-
scured. So long as all serious men held the same con-
victions, and those convictions were embodied in the law,
religion could speak with authority. The authority being
denied or shaken, the fact itself became uncertain. The
notion that everybody had a right to think as he pleased
was felt to be absurd in common things. The ignorant sub-
mitted to be guided by those who were better instructed
than themselves ; why should they be left to their private
judgment on subjects where to go wrong was the more dan-
gerous? All this was plain sailing. The corollary that if
it is to retain its influence the Church must not teach doc-
trines which outrage the common sense of mankind as
Luther led half Europe to believe that the Church was
doing in the sixteenth century, Ave agreed that we would not
dispute about. But I was interested to see that the leopard
had not changed its spots, that it merely readjusted its at-
titudes to suit the modern taste, and that if it ever recov-
ered its power it would claw and scratch in the old way.
Rome, like Pilate, may protest its innocence of the blood
which was spilt in its name and in its interests. Did that
tender and merciful court ever suggest to those prelates who

330 The English in the West Indies.

passed the Act in England for the burning of heretics that
they were transgressing the sacred rights of conscience ?
Did it reprove the Inquisition or send a mild remonstrance
to Philip II. ? The eyes of those who are willing to be
blinded will see only what they desire to see.

CHAPTER XX.

Return to Havana— The Spaniards in Cuba — Prospects — American influ-
ence— Future of the West Indies— English rumours — Leave Cuba —
The harbour at night — The Bahama Channel — Hayti — Port au Prince
— The black republic — West Indian history.

The air and quiet of Veclado (so my retreat was called) soon
set me up again, and I was able to face once more my hotel
and its Americans. I did not attempt to travel in Cuba, nor
was it necessary for my purpose. I stayed a few days longer
at Havana. I went to operas and churches ; I sailed about
the harbour in boats, the boatmen, all of them, not negroes,
as in the Antilles, but emigrants from the old country, chiefly
Galicians. I met people of all sorts, among the rest a Spanish
officer — a major of engineers — who, if he lives, may come to

something. Major D took me over the fortifications,

showed me the interior lines of the Moro, and their latest
specimens of modern artillery. The garrison are, of course,
Spanish regiments made of home-bred Castilians, as I could
not fail to recognize when I heard any of them speak. There
are certain words of common use in Spain powerful as the
magic formulas of enchanters over the souls of men. You
hear them everywhere in the Peninsula ; at cafe's, at tables
d'hote, and in private conversation. They are a part of the
national intellectual equipment. Either from prudery or be-
cause they are superior to old-world superstitions, the Cubans
have washed these expressions out of their language ; but the
national characteristics are preserved in the army, and the
spell does not lose its efficacy because the islanders disbelieve

332 The English in the West Indies.

in it. I have known a closed post office in Madrid, where
the clerk was deaf to polite entreaty, blown open by an oath
as by a bomb shell. A squad of recruits in the Moro, who
were lying in the shade under a tree, neglected to rise as an

officer went by. 'Saludad, C o!' he thundered out, and

they bounded to their feet as if electrified.

On the whole Havana was something to have seen. It is
the focus and epitome of Spanish dominion in those seas, and
I was forced to conclude that it was well for Cuba that the
English attempts to take possession of it had failed. Be the
faults of their administration as heavy as they are alleged to
be, the Spaniards have done more to Europeanise their islands
than we have done with ours. They have made Cuba Span-
ish— Trinidad, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada have never been
English at all, and Jamaica and Barbadoes are ceasing to be
English. Cuba is a second home to the Spaniards, a perma-
nent addition to their soil. We are as birds of passage, tem-
porary residents for transient purposes, with no home in our
islands at all. Once we thought them worth fighting for, and
as long as it was a question of ships and cannon we made
ourselves supreme rulers of the Caribbean Sea ; yet the French
and Spaniards will probably outlive us there ; they will re-
main perhaps as satellites of the United States, or in some
other confederacy, or in recovered strength of their own.
We, in a generation or two, if the causes now in operation
continue to work as they are now working, shall have disap-
peared from the scene. In Cuba there is a great Spanish
population ; Martinique and Guadaloupe are parts of France.
To us it seems a matter of indifference whether we keep our
islands,pr abandon them, and we leave ihe remnants of our
once precious settlements to float or drown as they can. Aus-
tralia and Canada take care of themselves ; we expect our
West Indies to do the same, careless of the difference of cir-
cumstance. We no longer talk of cutting our colonies adrift ;

West Indian Prospects. 333

the tone of public opinion is changed, and no one dares to
advocate openly the desertion of the least important of
thein. But the neglect and indifference continue. We will
not govern them effectively ourselves : our policy, so far
as we have any policy, is to extend among them the prin-
ciples of self-government, and self-government can only
precipitate our extinction there as completely as we know
that it would do in India if we were rash enough to ven-
ture the plunge. There is no enchantment in self-govern-
ment which will make people love each other when they
are indifferent or estranged. It can only force them into
sharper collision.

The opinion in Cuba was, and is, that America is the resid-
uary legatee of all the islands, Spanish and English equally,
and that she will be forced to take charge of them in the end
whether she likes it or not. Spain governs unjustly and cor-
ruptly ; the Cubans will not rest till they are free from her,
and if once independent they will throw themselves on
American protection.

We will not govern our islands at all, but leave them to
drift. Jamaica and the Antilles, given over to the negro
majorities, can only become like Hayti and St. Domingo ;
and the nature of things will hardly permit so fair a part of
the earth which has been once civilised .and under white
control to fall back into barbarism.

To England the loss of the West Indies would not itself be
serious ; but in the life of nations discreditable failures are
not measured by their immediate material consequences.
To allow a group of colonies to slide out of our hands be-
cause we could not or would not provide them with a toler-
able government would be nothing less than a public dis-
grace. It would be an intimation to all the world that we
were unable to maintain any longer the position which our
fathers had made for us ; and when the unravelling of the

334 The English, in the West Indies.

knitted fabric of the Empire has once begun the process will
be a rapid one.

' But what would you do ? ' I am asked impatiently. ' We
send out peers or gentlemen against whose character no di-
rect objection can be raised ; we assist them with local coun-
cils partly chosen by the people themselves. We send out
bishops, we send out missionaries, we open schools. What
can we do more ? We cannot alter the climate, we cannot
make planters prosper when sugar will not pay, we cannot
convert black men into whites, we cannot force the blacks to
work for the whites when they do not wish to work for them.
" Governing," as you call it, will not change the natural con-
ditions of things. You can suggest no remedy, and mere
fault-finding is foolish and mischievous.'

I might answer a good many things. Government cannot
do everything, but it can do something, and there is a differ-
ence between governors against whom there is nothing to
object, and men of special and marked capacity. There is a
difference between governors whose hands are tied by local
councils and whose feet are tied by instructions from home,
and a governor with a free hand and a wise head left to take
his own measures on the spot. I presume that no one can
seriously expect that an orderly organised nation can be
made out of the blacks, when, in spite of your schools and
missionaries, seventy per cent, of the children now born
among them are illegitimate. You can do for the West In-
dies, I repeat over and over again, what you do for the East ;
you can establish a firm authoritative government which
will protect the blacks in their civil rights and protect the
whites in theirs. You cannot alter the climate, it is true, or
make the soil more fertile. Already it is fertile as any in the
earth, and the climate is admirable for the purposes for wlrch
it is needed. But you can restore confidence in the stability
of your tenure, you can give courage to the whites who are

West Indian Prospects. 335

on the spot to remain there, and you can tempt capital and
enterprise to venture there which now seek investments else-
where. By keeping the rule in your own hands you will re-
store the white population to their legitimate influence ; the
blacks will again look up to them and respect them as they
ought to do. This you can do, and it will cost you nothing
save a little more pains in the selection of the persons whom
you are to trust with powers analogous to those which you
grant to your provincial governors in the Indian peninsula.

A preliminary condition of this, as of all other real im-
provements, is one, however, which will hardly be fulfilled.
Before a beginning can be made, a conviction is wanted that
life has other objects besides interest and convenience ; and
very few of us indeed have at the bottom of our hearts any
such conviction at all. We can talk about it in fine language
— no age ever talked more or better — but we don't believe in
it ; we believe only in professing to believe, which soothes
our vanity and does not interfere with our actions. From
fine words no harvests grow. The negroes are well disposed
to follow and obey any white who will be kind and just to
them, and in such following and obedience their only hope
of improvement lies. The problem is to create a state of
things under which Englishmen of vigour and character will
make their homes among them. Annexation to the United
States would lead probably to their extermination at no very
distant time. The Antilles are small, and the fate of the
negroes there might be no better than the fate of the
Caribs. The Americans are not a people who can be trifled
with ; no one knows it better than the negroes. They fear
them. They prefer infinitely the mild rule of England, and
under such a government as we might provide if we cared to
try, the whole of our islands might become like the Moravian
settlement in Jamaica, and the black nature, which has rather
degenerated than improved in these late days of licence,

336 The English in the West Indies.

might be put again in the way of regeneration. The process
would be slow — your seedlings in a plantation hang station-
ary year after year, but they do move at last. We cannot
disown our responsibility for these poor adopted brothers of
ours. We send missionaries into Africa to convert them to a
better form of religion ; why should the attempt seem chi-
merical to convert them practically to a higher purpose in our
own colonies ?

The reader will be weary of a sermon the points of which
have been reiterated so often. I might say that he requires
to have the lesson impressed upon him — that it is for his
good that I insist upon it, and not for my own. But this is
the common language of all preachers, and it is not found to
make the hearers more attentive. I will not promise to say
no more upon the subject, for it was forced upon me at every
moment and point of my journey. I am arriving near the
end, however, and if he has followed so far, he will perhaps
go on with me to the conclusion. I had three weeks to give
to Havana ; they were fast running out, and it was time for
me to be going. Strange stories, too, came from England,
which made me uneasy till I knew how they were set in cir-
culation. - One day Mr. Gladstone was said to have gone
mad, and the Queen the next. The Russians were about to
annex Afghanistan. Our troops had been cut to pieces in
Burmah. Something was going wrong with us every day in
one corner of the world or another. I found at last that the
telegraphic intelligence was supplied to the Cuban news-
papers from New York, that the telegraph clerks there were
generally Irish, and their facts were the creation of their
wishes. I was to return to Jamaica in the same vessel which
had brought me from it. She had been down to the isthmus,
and was to call at Havana on her way back. The captain's
most English face was a welcome sight to me when he ap-
peared one evening at dinner. He had come to tell me that

The Harbour at Night. 337

be was to sail early on the following morning, and I arranged
to go on board with him the same night. The Captain-Gen-
eral had not forgotten to instruct the Grobierno Civil to grant
me an exeat regno. I do not know that I gained much by his
intercession, for without it I should hardly have been de-
tained indefinitely, and as it was I had to pay more dollars
than I liked to part with. The necessary documents, how-
ever, had been sent through the British consul, and I was
free to leave when I pleased. I paid my bill at the hotel,
which was not after all an extravagant one, cleared my poc-
ket-book of the remainder of the soiled and tattered paper
which is called money, and does duty for it down to a half-
penny, and with my distinguished friend Don G , the

real acquisition which I had made in coming to his country,
and who would not leave me till I was in the boat, I drove
away to the wharf.

It was a still, lovely, starlight night. The moon had risen
over the hills, and was shining brightly on the roofs and
towers of the city, and on the masts and spars of the vessels
which were riding in the harbour. There was not a ripple on
the water, and stars and city, towers and ships, stood inverted
on the surface pointing downward as into a second infinity.
The charm was unfortunately interfered with by odours
worse than Coleridge found at Cologne and cursed in rhyme.
The drains of Havana, like orange blossom, give off their
most fragrant vapours in the dark hours, I could well be-
lieve Don G 's saying, that but for the natural healthiness

of the place, they would all die of it like poisoned flies. We
had to cut our adieus short, for the mouth of some horrid
sewer was close to us. In the boat I did not escape ; the
water smelt horribly as it was stirred by the oars, charged as
it was with three centuries of pollution, and the phosphores-
cent light shone with a sickly, sulphur-like brilliance. One

coiixd have fancied that one was in Charon's boat and was
22

388 The English in the West Indies.

crossing Acheron. When I reached the steamer I watched
from the deck the same ghostlike phenomenon which is de-
scribed by Tom Cringle. A fathom deep, in the ship's
shadow, some shark or other monster sailed slowly by in an
envelope of spectral lustre. When he stopped his figure dis-
appeared, when he moved on again it was like the movement
of a streak of blue flame. Such a creature did not seem as if
it could belong to our familiar sunlit ocean.

The state of the harbour is not creditable to the Spanish
Government, and I suppose will not be improved till there is
some change of dynasty. All that can be said for it is that it
is not the worst in these seas. Our ship had just come from
the Canal, and had brought the latest news from thence.
Fever and pestilence, deaths by revolver and deaths by sti-
letto, robbery and waste, piles of costly machinery, sole repre-
sentative of the squandered millions of francs, rusting in the
swamps. Drink shops and gambling hells, women plying
their vile profession there, solving the question of the School-
men whether the devils were of both sexes or only one.
Money still flowing in rivers, and the human vultures flocking
to the spoil. No law, no police. Murder, and no inquiry
into it ; bodies lying about unburied, and wild dogs and
Johnny crows holding carnival over them. Beautiful last
creation of the progress and enterprise of the nineteenth cen-
tury.

At dawn we swept out under the Moro, and away once
more into the free fresh open sea. We had come down on
the south side of the island, we returned by the north up the
old Bahama Channel where Drake died on his way home from
his last unsuccessful expedition — Lope de Vega singing a
paean over the end of the great ' dragon.' Fresh passengers
brought fresh talk. There was a clever young Jamaican on
board returning from a holiday ; he had the spirits of youth
about him, and would bave pleased my American who never

English Trade in Havana. 339

knew good come of despondency. He had hopes for his coun-
try, but they rested, like those of every sensible man that I
met, on an inability to believe that there would be further
advances in the direction of political liberty. A revised con-
stitution, he said, could issue only in fresh Gordon riots and
fresh calamities. He had been travelling in the Southern
States. He had seen the state of Mississippi deserted by the
whites, and falling back into a black wilderness. He had
seen South Carolina, which had narrowly escaped ruin under
a black and carpet-bagger legislature, and had recovered it-
self under the steady determination of the Americans that the
civil war was not to mean the domination of negro over white.
The danger was greater in the English islands than in either
of these states, from the enormous disproportion of numbers.
The experiment could be ventured only under a high census
and a restricted franchise, but the experience of all countries
showed that these limited franchises were invidious and
could not be maintained. The end was involved in the be-
ginning, and he trusted that prudent counsels would prevail.
We had gone too far already.

On board also there was a traveller from a Manchester
house of business, who gave me a more nourishing account
than I expected of the state of our trade, not so much with
the English islands as with the Spaniards in Cuba and on the
mainland. His own house, he said, had a large business with
Havana ; twenty firms in the north of England were com-
peting there, and all were doing well. The Spanish Ameri-
cans on the west side of the continent were good customers,
with the exception of the Mexicans, who were energetic and
industrious, and manufactured for their own consumption.
These modern Aztecs were skilful workmen, nimble-fingered
and inventive. Wages were low, but they were contented
with them. Mexico, I was surprised to hear from him, was
rising fast into prosperity. Whether human life was any

3-iO The English in the West Indies.

safer then than it was a few years ago, he did not tell
me.

Amidst talk and chess and occasional whist after nightfall
when reading became difficult, we ran along with smooth
seas, land sometimes in sight, with shoals on either side
of us.

We were to have one more glimpse at Hayti ; we were to
touch at Port au Prince, the seat of government of the suc-
cessors of Toussaint. If beauty of situation could mould
human character, the inhabitants of Port au Prince might
claim to be the first of mankind. St. Domingo or Espanola,
of which Hayti is the largest division, was the earliest island
discovered by Columbus and the finest in the Caribbean
Ocean. It remained Spanish, as I have already said, for 200
years, when Hayti was taken by the French buccaneers, and
made over by them to Louis XIV. The French kept it till
the Revolution. They built towns ; they laid out farms and
sugar fields ; they planted coffee all over the island, where it
now grows wild. Vast herds of cattle roamed over the moun-
tain ; splendid houses rose over the rich savannah. The
French Church put out its strength ; there were churches
and priests in every parish ; there were monasteries and nun-
neries for the religious orders. So firm was the hold that
they had gained that Hayti, like Cuba, seemed to have been
made a part of the old world, and as civilised as France it-
self. But French civilisation became itself electric. The
Revolution came, and the reign of Libert}7. The blacks took
arms ; they surprised the plantations ; they made a clean
sweep of the whole French population. Yellow fever swept
away the armies which were sent to avenge the massacre, and
France being engaged in annexing Europe had no leisure to
despatch more. The island being thus derelict, Spain and
England both tried their hand to recover it, but failed from
the same cause, and a black nation, with a republican con-

Port Au Prince. 341

stitution and a population perhaps of about a million and
a half of pure-blood negroes, has since been in unchallenged
possession, and has arrived at the condition which has been
described to us by Sir Spencer St. John. Kepublics which
begin with murder and plunder do not come to much good
in this world. Hayti has passed through many revolutions,
and is no nearer than at first to stability. The present presi-
dent, M. Salomon, who was long a refugee in Jamaica, came
into power a few years back by a turn of the wheel. He was
described to me as a peremptory gentleman who made quick
work with his political opponents. His term of office having
nearly expired, he had re-elected himself shortly before for
another seven years and was prepared to maintain his right
by any measures which he might think expedient. He had a
few regiments of soldiers, who, I was told, were devoted to
him, and a fleet consisting of two gunboats commanded by an
American officer to whom he chiefly owed his security.

We had steamed along the Hayti coast all one afternoon,
underneath a high range of hills which used to be the bunt-
ing ground of the buccaneers. We had passed their famous
Tortugas'" without seeing them. Towards evening we entered
the long channel between Gonaive island and the mainland,
going slowly that we might not arrive at Port au Prince be-
fore daylight. It was six in the morning when the anchor
rattled down, and I went on deck to look about me. We
were at the head of a fiord rather broader than those in Nor-
way, but very like them — wooded mountains rising on either
side of us, an open valley in front, and on the rich level soil
washed down by the rains and deposited along the shore, the
old French and now President Salomon's capital. Palms and
oranges and other trees were growing everywhere among the
houses, giving the impression of graceful civilisation. Di-
rectly before us were three or four wooded islets which form
'Tortoise Islands.; the buccaneers' head quarters.

342 The English in the West Indies.

a natural breakwater, and above them were seen the masts of
the vessels which, were lying in the harbour behind. Close
to where we were brought up lay the ' Canada,' an English
frigate, and about a quarter of a mile from her an American
frigate of about the same size, with the stars and stripes con-
spicuously flying. We have had some differences of late with
the Hayti authorities, and the satisfaction which we ashed for
having been refused or delayed, a man-of-war had been sent
to ask redress in more peremptory terms. The town lay
under her guns ; the president's ships, which she might per-
haps have seized as a security, had been taken out of sight
into shallow water, where she could not follow them. The
Americans have no particular rights in Hayti, and are as little
liked as we are, but they are feared, and they do not allow
any business of a serious kind to go on in those waters with-
out knowing what it is about. Perhaps the president's admi-
ral of the station being an American may have had something
to do with their presence. Anyway, there the two ships were
lying when I came up from below, their hulks and spars out-
lined picturesquely against the steep wooded shores. The
air was hot and steamy ; fishing-vessels with white sails were
drifting slowly about the glassy water. Except for the heat
and a black officer of the customs in uniform, and his boat
and black crew alongside, I could have believed myself off
Molde or some similar Norwegian town, so like everything
seemed, even to the colour of the houses.

We were to stay some hours. After breakfast we landed.
I had seen Jacmel, and therefore thought myself prepared for
the worst which I should find. Jacmel was an outlying
symptom ; Port au Prince was the central ulcer. Long before
we came to shore there came off whiffs, not of drains as at
Havana, but of active dirt fermenting in the sunlight. Calling
our handkerchiefs to our help and looking to our feet care-
fully, we stepped up upon the quay and walked forward as

Port Au Prince. 343

judiciously as we could. With the help of stones we crossed
a shallow ditch, where rotten fish, vegetables, and other articles
were lying about promiscuously, and we came on what did
duty for a grand parade.

"We were in a Paris of the gutter, with boulevards and
places, fiacres and crimson parasols. The boulevards were
littered with the refuse of the houses and were foul as pig-
sties, and the ladies under the parasols were picking their
way along them in Parisian boots and silk dresses. I saw a
fiacre broken down in a black pool out of which a blacker
ladyship was scrambling. Fever breeds so prodigally iu that
pestilential squalor that 40,000 people were estimated to have
died of it in a single year. There were shops and stores and
streets, men and women in tawdry European costume, and
officers on horseback with a tatter of lace and gilding. We
passed up the principal avenue, which opened on the market
place. Above the market was the cathedral, more hideous
than even the Mormon temple at Salt Lake. It was full of
ladies ; the rank, beauty, and fashion of Port au Prince were
at their morning mass, for they are Catholics with African be-
liefs underneath. They have a French clergy, an archbishop
and bishop, paid miserably but still subsisting ; subsisting
not as objects of reverence at all, as they are at Dominica,
but as the humble servants and ministers of black society.
We English are in bad favour just now ; no wonder, with the
guns of the ' Canada ' pointed at the city ; but the chief com-
plaint is on account of Sir Spencer St. John's book, which
they cry out against with a degree of anger which is the sur-
est evidence of its truth. It would be unfair even to hint at
the names or stations of various persons who gave me infor-
mation about the condition of the place and people. Enough
that those who knew well what they were speaking about as-
sured me that Hayti was the most ridiculous caricature of
civilisation in the whole world. Doubtless the whites there

344 The English in the West Indies.

are not disinterested witnesses ; for they are treated as they
once treated the blacks. They can own no freehold property,
and exist ouly on tolerance. They are called ' white trash.'
Black dukes and marquises drive over them in the street and
swear at them, and they consider it an invasion of the natu-
ral order of thiugs. If this was the worst, or even if the dirt
and the disease was the worst, it might be borne with, for the
whites might go away if they pleased, and they pay the pen-
alty themselves for choosing to be there. But this is not the
worst. Immorality is so universal that it almost ceases to be
a fault, for a fault implies an exception, and in Havti it is the
rule. Young people make experiment of one another before
they will enter into any closer connection. So far they are
no worse than in our own English islands, where the custom
is equally general ; but behind the immorality, behind the
religiosity, there lies active and alive the horrible revival of
the West African superstitions ; the serpent worship, and
the child sacrifice, and the cannibalism. There is no room to
doubt it, A missionary assured me that an instance of it oc-
curred only a year ago within his own personal knowledge.
The facts are notorious ; a full account was published in one
of the local newspapers, and the only result was that the
president imprisoned the editor for exposing his country. A
few years ago persons guilty of these infamies were tried and
punished ; now they are left alone, because to prosecute and
convict them would be to acknowledge the truth of the in-
dictment.

In this, as in all other communities, there is a better side
as well as a worse. The better part is ashamed of the condi-
tion into which the country has fallen ; rational and well-dis-
posed Haytians would welcome back the French but for an
impression, whether well founded or ill I know not, that the
Americans would not suffer any European nation to reacquire
or recover any new territory on their side of the Atlantic.

The Blacks in Ilayii. 345

They make the most they can of their French connection.
They send their children to Paris to be educated, and many
of them go thither themselves. There is money among them,
though industry there is none. The Hayti coffee which bears
so high a reputation is simply gathered under the bushes
which the French planters left behind them, and is not half as
excellent as it ought to be because it is so carelessly cleaned,
yet so rich is the island in these and its natural productions
that they cannot entirely ruin it. They have a revenue from
their customs of 5,000,000 dollars to be the prey of political
schemers. They have a constitution, of course, with a legis-
lature— two houses of a legislature — universal suffrage, &c,
but it does not save them from revolutions, which recurred
every two or three years till the time of the present president.
He being of stronger metal than the rest, takes care that the
votes are given as he pleases, shoots down recusants, and
knows how to make himself feared. He is a giant, they say
— I did not see him — six feet some inches in height and broad
in proportion. When in Jamaica he was a friend of Gordon,
and the intimacy between them is worth noting, as throwing
light on Gordon's political aspirations.

I stayed no longer than the ship's business detained the
captain, and I breathed more freely when I had left that mis-
erable cross-birth of ferocity and philanthropic sentiment.
No one can foretell the future fate of the black republic, but
the present order of things cannot last in an island so close
under the American shores. If the Americans forbid any
other power to interfere, they will have to interfere them-
selves. If they find Mormonism an intolerable blot upon
their escutcheon, they will have to put a stop in some way
or other to cannibalism and devil-worship. Meanwhile, the
ninety years of negro self-government have had their use v.\
showing what it really means, and if English statesmen, citlu r
to save themselves trouble Or to please the prevailing uuin-

346 The English in the West Indies.

structed sentiment, insist on extending it, they will be found
when the accounts are made up to have been no better
friends to the unlucky negro than their slave-trading fore-
fathers.

From the head of the bay on which Port au Prince stands
there reaches out on the west the long arm or peninsula
which is so peculiar a feature in the geography of the island.
The arm bone is a continuous ridge of mountains rising to a
height of 8,000 feet and stretching for 160 miles. At the
bach towards the ocean is Jacmel, on the other side is the
bight of Leogane, over which and along the land our course
lay after leaving President Salomon's city. The day was un-
usually hot, and we sat under an awning on deck watching
the changes in the landscape as ravines opened and closed
again, and tall peaks changed their shapes . and angles.
Clouds came down upon the mountain tops and passed off
again, whole galleries of pictures swept by, and nature never
made more lovely ones. The peculiarity of tropical mountain
scenery is that the high summits are clothed with trees. The
outlines are thus softened and rounded, save where the rock
is broken into precipices. Along the sea and for several
miles inland are the Basses Terres as they used to be called,
level alluvial plains, cut and watered at intervals by rivers,
once covered with thriving plantations and now a jungle.
There are no wild beasts there save an occasional man, few
snakes, and those not dangerous. The acres of richest soil
which are waiting there till reasonable beings can return and
cultivate them, must be hundreds of thousands. In the val-
leys and on the slopes there are all gradations of climate,
abundant water, grass lands that might be black with cattle,
or on the loftier ranges white with sheep.

It is strange to think how chequered a history these islands
have had, how far they are even yet from any condition which
promises permanence. Not one of them has an-ived at any

West Indian History. 347

stable independence. Spaniards, English and French, Dutch
aud Danes scrambled for them, fought for them, occupied
them more or less with their own people, but it was not to
found new nations, but to get gold or get something which
could be changed for gold. Only occasionally, and as it were
by accident, they became the theatre of any grander game.
The war of the Reformation was carried thither, and heroic
deeds were done there, but it was by adventurers who were
in search of plunder for themselves. France and England
fought among the Antilles, and their names are connected
with many a gallant action ; but they fought for the sov-
ereignty of the seas, not for the rights and liberties of the
French or English inhabitants of the islands. Instead of oc-
cupying them with free inhabitants, the European nations
filled them with slave gangs. They were valued only for the
wealth which they yielded, and society there has never as-
sumed any particularly noble aspect. There has been splen-
dour and luxurious living, and there have been crimes and
horrors, and revolts and massacres. There has been romance,
but it has been the romance of pirates and outlaws. The
natural graces of human life do not show themselves under
such conditions. There has been no saint in the West Indies
since Las Casas, no hero unless philonegro enthusiasm can
make one out of Toussaint. There are no people there in the
true sense of the word, with a character and purpose of their
own, unless to some extent in Cuba, and therefore when the
wind has changed and the wealth for which the islands were
alone valued is no longer to be made among them, and sla-
very is no longer possible and would not pay if it were, there
is nothing to fall back upon. The palaces of the English
planters and merchants fall to decay ; their wines and their
furniture, their books and their pictures, are sold or dispersed.
Their existence is a struggle to keep afloat, and one by one
they go under in the waves.

348 The English in the West Indies.

The blacks as long as they were slaves were docile and
partially civilised. They have behaved on the whole well in
our islands since their emancipation, for though they were
personally free the whites were still their rulers, and they
looked up to them with respect. They have acquired land
and notions of property, some of them can read, many of
them are tolerable workmen and some excellent, but in char-
acter the movement is backwards, not forwards. Even in
Hayti, after the first outburst of ferocity, a tolerable govern-
ment-was possible for a generation or two. Orderly habits
are not immediately lost, but the effect of leaving the negro
nature to itself is apparent at last. In the English islands
they are innocently happy in the unconsciousness of the obli-
gations of morality. They eat, drink, sleep, and smoke, and do
the least in the way of work that they can. They have no
ideas of duty, and therefore are not made uneasy by neglect-
ing it. One or other of them occasionally rises in the legal
or other profession, but there is no sign, not the slightest,
that the generality of the race are improving either in intelli-
gence or moral habits ; all the evidence is the other way. No
Uncle Tom, no Aunt Chloe need be looked for in a negro's
cabin in the West Indies. If such specimens of black human-
ity are to be found anywhere, it will be where they have con-
tinued under the old influences as servants in white men's
houses. The generality are mei*e good-natured animals, who
in service had learnt certain accomplishments, and had de-
veloped certain qualities of a higher kind. Left to them-
selves they fall back upon the superstitions and habits of
their ancestors. The key to the character of any people is to
be found in the local customs which have spontaneously grown
or are growing among them. The customs of Dahomey have
not yet shown themselves in the English West Indies and
never can while the English authority is maintained, but no
custom of any kind will be found in a negro hut or village

Last Impressions. 349

from which his most sanguine friend can derive a hope that
he is on the way to mending himself.

Roses do not grow on thorns, nor figs on thistles. A
healthy human civilisation was not perhaps to be looked for
in countries which have been alternately the prey of avarice,
ambition, and sentimentalism. We visit foreign countries
to see varieties of life and character, to learn languages that
we may gain an insight into various literatures, to see man-
ners unlike our own springing naturally out of different soils
and climates, to see beautiful works of art, to see places asso-
ciated with great men and great actions, and subsidiary to
these, to see lakes and mountains, and strange skies and seas.
But the localities of great events and the homes of the actors
in them are only saddening when the spiritual results are dis-
appointing, and scenery loses its charm unless the grace of
humanity is in the heart of it. To the man of science the
West Indies may be delightful and instructive. Rocks and
trees and flowers remain as they always were, and Nature is
constant to herself ; but the traveller whose heart is with his
kind, and cares only to see his brother mortals making their
corner of this planet into an orderly and rational home, had
better choose some other object for his pilgrimage.

CHAPTER XXI.

Return to Jamaica — Cherry Garden again— Black servants — Social con-
ditions—Sir Henry Norman— King"s House once more — Negro suf-
frage— The will of the people— The Irish python — Conditions of co-
lonial union — Oratory and statesmanship.

I had to return to Jamaica from Cuba to meet the mail to
England. My second stay could be but brief. For the short
time that was allowed me I went back to my hospitable
friends at Cherry Garden, which is an oasis in the wilderness.
In the heads of the family there was cultivation and simplicity
and sense. There was a home life with its quiet occupations
and enjoyments — serious when seriousness was needed, light
and bright in the ordinary routine of existence. The black
domestics, far unlike the children of liberty whom I had left
at Port au Prince, had caught their tone from their master
and mistress, and were low-voiced, humorous, and pleasant
to talk with. So perfect were they in their several capacities,
that, like the girls at Government House at Dominica, I would
have liked to pack them in my portmanteau and carry them
home. The black butler received me on my arrival as an old
friend. He brought me a pair of boots which I had left be-
hind me on my fh-st visit ; he told me ' the female ' had found
them. The lady of the house took me out for a drive with
her. The coachman upset us into a ditch, and we narrowly
escaped being pitched into a ravine. The dusky creature in-
sisted pathetically that it was not his fault, nor the horse's
fault. His ebony wife had left him for a week's visit to a
friend, and his wits had gone after her. Of course he was

Cherry Garden Again. 351

forgiven. Cherry Garden was a genuine homestead, a very
menagerie of domestic animals of all sorts and breeds.
Horses loitered under the shade of the mangoes ; cows,
asses, dogs, turkeys, cocks and hens, geese, guinea fowl and
pea fowl lounged and strutted about the paddocks. In the
grey of the morning they held their concerts ; the asses
brayed, the dogs barked, the turkeys gobbled, and the pea
fowl screamed. It was enough to waken the seven sleepers,
but the noises seemed so home-like and natural that they
mixed pleasantly in one's dreams. One morning, after they
had been holding a special jubilee, the butler apologised for
them when he came to call me, and laughed as at the best of
jokes when I said they did not mean any harm. The great
feature of the day was five cats, with blue eyes and spotlessly
white, who walked in regularly at breakfast, ranged them-
selves on their tails round their mistress's chair, and ate
their porridge and milk like reasonable creatures. Within
and without all was orderly. The gardens were in perfect
condition ; fields were being inclosed and planted ; the work
of the place went on of itself, with the eye of the mistress on
it, and her voice, if necessary, heard in command ; but black
and white were all friends together. What could man ask
for, more than to live all his days in such a climate and with
such surroundings ? Why should a realised ideal like this
pass away ? Why may it not extend itself till it has trans-
formed the features of all our West Indian possessions ?
Thousands of English families might be living in similar
scenes, happy in themselves and spreading round them a
happy, wholesome English atmosphere. Why not indeed ?
Only because we are enchanted. Because in Jamaica and
Barbadoes the white planters had a constitution granted them
two hundred years ago, therefore their emancipated slaves
must now have a constitution also. Wonderful logic of for-
mulas, powerful as a witches' cauldron for mischief as long

352 The English in the West Indies.

as it is believed in. The colonies and the Empire ! If the
colonies were part indeed of the Empire, if they were taken
into partnership as the Americans take theirs, and were mem-
bers of an organised body, if an injury to each single limb
would be felt as an injury to the whole, we should not be
playing with their vital interests to catch votes at home.
Alas ! at home we are split in two, and party is more than
the nation, and famous statesmen, thinly disguising their mo-
tives under a mask of policy, condemn to-day what they ap-
proved of yesterday, and catch at power by projects which
they would be the first to denounce if suggested by their ad-
versaries. Till this tyranny be overpast, to bring into one
the scattered portions of the Empire is the idlest of dreams,
and the most that is to be hoped for is to arrest any active
mischief. Happy Americans, who have a Supreme Court
with a code of fundamental laws to control the vagaries of
politicians and check the passions of fluctuating electoral ma-
jorities ! What the Supreme Court is to them, the Crown
ought to be for us ; but the Crown is powerless and must
remain powerless, and therefore we are as we are, and our
national existence is made the shuttlecock of party conten-
tion.

Time passed so pleasantly with me in these concluding
days that I could have wished it to be the nothing which
metaphysicians say that it is, and that when one was happy
it would leave one alone. We wandered in the shade in the
mornings, we made expeditions in the evenings, called at
friends' houses, and listened to the gossip of the island. It
turned usually on the one absorbing subject — black servants
and the difficulty of dealing with them. An American lady
from Pennsylvania declared emphatically as her opinion that
emancipation had been a piece of folly, and that things would
never mend till they were slaves again.

One of my own chief hopes in going originally to Jamaica

Sir Henry Norman. 353

had been to see and learn the views of the distinguished
Governor there. Sir Henry Norman had been one of the
most eminent of the soldier civilians in India. He had
brought with him a brilliant reputation ; he had won the
confidence in the West Indies of all classes and all colours.
He, if anyone, would understand the problem, and from the
high vantage ground of experience would know what could
or could not be done to restore the influence of England and
the prosperity of the colonies. Unfortunately, Sir Henry had
been called to London, as I mentioned before, on a question
of the conduct of some official, and I was afraid that I should
miss him altogether. He returned, however, the day before
I was to sail. He was kind enough to ask me to spend an
evening with him, and I was again on my last night a guest
at King's House.

A dinner party offers small opportunity for serious conver-
sation, nor, indeed, could I expect a great person in Sir
Henry's position to enter upon subjects of consequence with
a stranger like myself. I could see, however, that I had noth-
ing to correct in the impression of his character which his
reputation had led me to form about him, and I wished more
than ever that the system of government of which he had
been so admirable a servant in India could be applied to his
present position, and that he or such as he could have the
administration of it. We had common friends in the Indian
service to talk about ; one especially, Reynell Taylor, now
dead, who had been the earliest of my boy companions.
Taylor had been one of the handful of English who held the
Punjaub in the first revolt of the Sikhs. With a woman's
modesty he had the spirit of a knight-errant. Sir Henry
described him as the ' very soul of chivalry,' and seemed him-
self to be a man of the same pure and noble nature, perhaps
liable, from the generosity of his temperament, to believe
more than I could do in modern notions and in modern polit-
28

354 The English in the West Indies.

ical heroes, but certainly not inclining of his own will to rec-
ommend any rash innovations. I perceived that like myself
he felt no regret that so much of the soil of Jamaica was pass-
ing to peasant black proprietors. He thought welt of their
natural disposition ; he believed them capable of improve-
ment. He thought that the possession of land of their own
would bring them into voluntary industry, and lead them
gradually to the adoption of civilised habits. He spoke with
reserve, and perhaps I may not have understood him fully,
but he did not seem to me to think much of their political
capacity. The local boards which have been established as
an education for higher functions have not been a success.
They had been described to me in all parts of the island as
inflamed centres of peculation and mismanagement. Sir
Henry said nothing from which I could gather his own opin-
ion. I inferred, however (he will pardon me if I misrepre-
sent him), that he had no great belief in a federation of the
islands, in 'responsible government,' and such like, as within
the bounds of present possibilities. Nor did he think that
responsible statesmen at home had any such arrangement in
view.

That such an arrangement was in contemplation a few
years ago, I knew from competent authority. Perhaps the
unexpected interest which the English people have lately
shown in the colonies has modified opinion in those high
circles, and has taught politicians that they must advance
more cautiously. But the wind still sits in the old quarter.
Three years ago, the self-suppressed constitution in Jamaica
was partially re-established. A franchise was conceded both
there and in Barbadoes which gave every black householder
a vote. Even in poor Dominica, an extended suffrage was
hung out as a remedy for its wretchedness. If nothing
further is intended, these concessions have been gratuitously
mischievous. It has roused the hopes of political agitators,

Negro Suffrage. 355

not in Jamaica only, but all over the Antilles. It has taught
the people, who have no grievances at all, who in their pres-
ent state are better protected than any peasantry in the
world except the Irish, to look to political changes as a road
to an impossible millennium. It has rekindled hopes which
had been long extinguished, that, like their brothers in Hayti,
they were on the way to have the islands to themselves. It has
alienated the English colonists, filled them with the worst ap-
prehensions, and taught them to look wistfully from their own
country to a union Avith America. A few elected members
in a council where they may be counterbalanced by an equal
number of official members seems a small thing in itself. So
long as the equality was maintained, my Yankee friend was
still willing to risk his capital in Jamaican enterprises. But
the principle has been allowed. The existing arrangement
is a half-measure which satisfies none and irritates all, and
collisions between the representatives of the people and the
nominees of the Government are only avoided by leaving a
sufficient number of official seats unfilled. To have re-en-
tered upon a road where you cannot stand still, where re-
treat is impossible, and where to go forward can only be rec-
ommended on the hypothesis that to give a man a vote will
itself qualify him for the use of it, has been one of the minor
achievements of the last Government of Mr. Gladstone, an 1
is likely to be as successful as his larger exploits nearer home
have as yet proved to be. A supreme court, were we happy
enough to possess such a thing, would forbid these venturous
experiments of sanguine statesmen who may happen, for a
moment, to command a trifling majority in the House of
Commons.

I could not say what I felt completely to Sir Henry, who.
perhaps, had been in personal relations with Mr. Gladstone's
Government, Perhaps, too, he was one of those numerous
persons of tried ability and intelligence who have only a faint

356 The English in the West Indies.

belief that the connection between Great Britain and the
colonies can be of long continuance. I inferred that it might
be so, because when I mentioned the irritation which I had
observed in Melbourne about the German annexation in New
Guinea he seemed to think that we might have left the Vic-
torians and the Germans to fight out the quarrel among them-
selves. The injury — if it was one — was to the Australians,
not to us. The Australians might have borne their own re-
sponsibilities, and we could have been merely spectators.
That such a view could be entertained and expressed by the
governor of a considerable colony is an evidence how little
below the surface the idea of Imperial federation has as yet
penetrated. The Australians are either British subjects or
they are not. If they are not, the connection is a shadow,
and it is as well to have done with illusions. If they are
British subjects, the nation with whom they quarrel will ac-
knowledge no fine distinctions, and will fix the responsibility
where it rightly belongs. To leave a colony to go to war on
its own account is to leave the peace of the Empire at the
mercy of any one of its dependencies. So obvious is this,
that Sir Henry's observation was perhaps no more than gentle
irony. The public may amuse themselves with the vision of
an Imperial union ; practical statesmen believe that they know
it to be impossible.

As to the West Indies there are but two genuine alterna-
tives : one to leave them to themselves to shape their own
destinies, as we leave Australia ; the other to govern them as
if they were a part of Great Britain Avith the same scrupulous
care of the people and their interests with which we govern
Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. England is responsible for
the social condition of those islands. She filled them with
negroes when it was her interest to maintain slavery, she
emancipated those negroes when popular opinion at home
demanded that slavery should end. It appears to me that

Alternative Courses. 357

England ought to bear the consequences of her own actions,
and assume to herself the responsibilities of a state of things
which she has herself created. We are partly unwilling to
take the trouble, partly we cling to the popular belief that to
trust all countries with the care of their own concerns is the
way to raise the character of the inhabitants and to make them
happy and contented. We dimly perceive that the population
of the West Indies is not a natural growth of internal tenden-
cies and circumstances, and we therefore hesitate before we
plunge completely and entirely into the downward course ;
but we play with it, we drift towards it, we advance as far as
we dare, giving them the evils of both systems and the ad-
vantages of neither. At the same moment we extend the
suffrage to the blacks with one hand, while with the other we
refuse to our own people the benefit of a treaty which would
have rescued them from imminent ruin and brought them
into relations with their powerful kindred close at hand — re-
lations which might save them from the most dangerous con-
sequences of a negro political supremacy — and the result is
that the English in those islands are melting away and will
soon be crowded out, or will have departed of themselves in
disgust. A policy so far-reaching, and affecting so seriously
the condition of the oldest of our colonial possessions, ought
not to have been adopted on their own authority, by doctri-
naire statesmen in a cabinet, without fully and frankly consult-
ing the English nation ; and no further step ought to be
taken in that direction until the nation has had the circum-
stances of the islands laid before it, and has pronounced one
way or the other its own sovereign pleasure. Does or does
not England desire that her own people shall be enabled to
live and thrive in the West Indies ? If she decides that her
hands are too full, that she is over-empired and cannot at-
tend to them — cadit quceslio — there is no more to be said.
But if this is her resolution the hands of the West Indians

358 The English in the West Indies.

ought to be untied. They ought to be allowed to make their
sugar treaties, to make any treaties, to enter into the closest
relations with America which the Americans will accept, as
the only chance which will be left them.

Such abandonment, however, will bring us no honour. It
will not further that federation of the British Empire which
so many of us now profess to desire. If we wish Australia
and Canada to draw into closer union with us, it will not be
by showing that we are unable to manage a group of colonies
which are almost at our doors. Englishmen all round the
globe have rejoiced together in this year which is passing by
us over the greatness of their inheritance, and have celebrated
with enthusiasm the half-century during which our lady- mis-
tress has reigned over the Empire. Unity and federation are
on our lips, and we have our leagues and our institutes, and
in the eagerness of our wishes we dream that we see the ful-
filment of them. Neither the kingdom of heaven nor any
other kingdom 'comes with observation.' It comes not with
after-dinner speeches however eloquent, or with flowing sen-
timents however for the moment sincere. The spirit which
made the Empire can alone hold it together. The American
Union was not saved by oratory. It was saved by the deter-
mination of the bravest of the people ; it was cemented by
the blood which dyed the slopes of Gettysburg. The union
of the British Empire, if it is to be more than a dream, can
continue only while the attracting force of the primary com-
mands the willing attendance of the distant satellites. Let
the magnet lose its power, let the confidence of the colonies
in the strength and resolution of their central orb be once
shaken, and the centrifugal force will sweep them away into
orbits of their own.

The race of men who now inhabit this island of ours show
no signs of degeneracy. The bow of Ulysses is sound as ever ;
moths and worms have not injured either cord or horn ; but

Conciliation. 359

it is unstrung, and the arrows which are shot from it drop
feebly to the ground. The Irish python rises again out of its
swamp, and Phoebus Apollo launches no shaft against the
scaly sides of it. Phoebus Apollo attempts the milder methods
of concession and persuasion. 'Python,' he says, 'in days
when I was ignorant and unjust I struck you down and bound
you. I left officers and men with you of my own race to
watch you, to teach you, to rule you ; to force you, if your
own nature could not be changed, to leave your venomous
ways. You have refused to be taught, you twist in your
chains, you bite and tear, and when you can you steal and
murder. I see that I was wrong from the first. Every creat-
ure has a right to live according to its own disposition. I
was a tyrant, and you did well to resist ; I ask you to forgive
and forget. I set you free ; I hand you over my own repre-
sentatives as a pledge of my goodwill, that you may devour
them at your leisure. They have been the instruments of
my oppression ; consume them, destroy them, do what you
will with them : and henceforward I hope that we shall live
together as friends, and that you will show yourself worthy
of my generosity and of the freedom which you have so glo-
riously won.'

A sun-god who thus addressed a disobedient satellite
might have the eloquence of a Demosthenes and the finest of
the fine intentions which pave the road to the wrong place,
but he would not be a divinity who would command the will-
ing confidence of a high-spirited kindred. Great Britain will
make the tie which holds the colonies to her a real one when
she shows them and shows the world that she is still equal to
her great place, that her arm is not shortened and her heart
has not grown faint.

Men speak of the sacredness of liberty. They talk as if
the will of everyone ought to be his only guide, that alle-
giance is due only to majorities, that allegiance of any other

360 The English in the West Indies.

kind is base and a relic of servitude. The Americans are the
freest people in the world ; but in their freedom they have to
obey the fundamental laws of the Union. Again and again
in the West Indies Mr. Motley's words came back to me. To
be taken into the American Union is to be adopted into a
partnership. To belong as a Crown colony to the British
Empire, as things stand, is no partnership at all. It is to be-
long to a power which sacrifices, as it has always sacrificed,
the interest of its dependencies to its own. The blood runs
freely through every vein and artery of the American body
corporate. Every single citizen feels his share in the life of
his nation. Great Britain leaves her Crown colonies to take
care of themselves, refuses what they ask, and forces on them
what they had rather be without. If I were a West Indian I
should feel that under the stars and stripes I should be safer
than I was at present from political experimenting. I
should have a market in which to sell my produce where I
should be treated as a friend ; I should have a power behind
me and protecting me, and I should have a future to which
I could look forward with confidence. America would re-
store me to hope and life ; Great Britain allows me to sink,
contenting herself with advising me to be patient. Why
should I continue loyal when my loyalty was so contemptu-
ously valued ?

But I will not believe that it will come to this. An Eng-
lishman may be heavily tempted, but in evil fortune as in
good his heart is in the old place. The administration of
our affairs is taken for the present from prudent statesmen,
and is made over to those who know how best to flatter the
people with fine-sounding sentiments and idle adulation. All
sovereigns have been undone by flatterers. The people are
sovereign now, and, being new to power, listen to those who
feed their vanity. The popular orator has been the ruin of
every country which has trusted to him. He never speaks

Oratorical Statesmen. 361

an unwelcome truth, for his existence depends on pleasing,
and he cares only to tickle the ears of his audience. His
element is anarchy ; his function is to undo what better men
have done. In wind he lives and moves and has his being.
When the gods are angry, he can raise it to a hurricane and
lay waste whole nations in ruin and revolution. It was said
long ago, a man full of words shall not prosper upon the
earth. Times have changed, for in these days no one pros-
pers so well. Can he make a speech ? is the first question
which the constituencies ask when a candidate is offered to
their suffrages. "When the Roman commonwealth developed
from an aristocratic republic into a democracy, and, as now
with its, the sovereignty wras in the mass of the people, the
oratorical faculty came to the front in the same way. The
finest speaker was esteemed the fittest man to be made a
consul or a prsetor of, and there were schools of rhetoric
where aspirants for office had to go to learn gesture and in-
tonation before they could present themselves at the hustings.
The sovereign people and their orators could do much, but
they could not alter facts, or make that which was not, to be,
or that which was, not to be. The orators could perorate
and the people could decree, but facts remained and facts
proved the strongest, and the end of that was that after a
short supremacy the empire which they had brought to the
edge of ruin was saved at the last extremity ; the sovereign
people lost their liberties, and the tongues of political orators
were silenced for centuries. Illusion at last takes the form
of broken heads, and the most obstinate credulity is not
proof against that form of argument.

CHAPTER XXII.

Going home — Retrospect — Alternative courses — Future of the Empire
— Sovereignty of the sea — The Greeks— The rights of man — Plato —
The voice of the people — Imperial federation — Hereditary colonial
policy — New Irelands — Effects of party government.

Once more upon the sea on our homeward way, carrying, as
Emerson said, ' the bag of JEolus in the boiler of our boat,'
careless whether there be wind or calm. Our old naval
heroes passed and repassed upon the same waters under
harder conditions. They had to struggle against tempests, to
fight with enemy's cruisers, to battle for their lives with
nature as with man — and they were victorious over them all.
They won for Britannia the sceptre of the sea, and built up
the Empire on which the sun never sets. To us, their suc-
cessors, they handed down the splendid inheritance, and we
in turn have invented steam ships and telegraphs, and thrown
bridges over the ocean, and made our far-off possessions as
easy of access as the next parish. The attractive force of the
primary ought to have increased in the same ratio, but we do
not find that it has. and the centrifugal and the centripetal
tendencies of our satellites are year by year becoming more
nicely balanced. These beautiful West Indian islands were
intended to be homes for the overflowing numbers of our
own race, and the few that have gone there are being crowded
out by the blacks from Jamaica and the Antilles. Our poor
helots at home drag on their lives in the lanes and alleys of
our choking cities, and of those who gather heart to break off
on their own account and seek elsewhere for a land of prom-

To Be or Not to Be. 363

ise, the large majority are weary of the flag under which they
have only known suffering, and prefer America to the English
colonies. They are waking now to understand the opportuni-
ties which are slipping through their hands. Has the awak-
ening come too late ? We have ourselves mixed the cup ;
must we now drink it to the dregs ?

It is too late to enable us to make homes in the West In •
dies for the swarms who are thrown off by our own towns
and villages. We might have done it. Englishmen would
have thriven as well in Jamaica and the Antilles as the
Spaniards have thriven in Cuba. But the islands are now
peojjled by men of another colour. The whites there are as
units among hundreds, and the proportion cannot be altered.
But it is not too late to redeem our own responsibilities.
We brought the blacks there ; we have as yet not done much
for their improvement, when their notions of morality are
still so elementary that more than half of their children
are born out of marriage. The English planters were en-
couraged to settle there when it suited our convenience to
maintain the islands for Imperial purposes ; like the land-
lords in Ireland, they were our English garrison ; and as
with the landlords in Ireland, when we imagine that they
have served their purpose and can be no longer of use to
us, we calmly change the conditions of society. We disclaim
obligations to help them in the confusion which we have
introduced ; we tell them to help themselves, and they can-
not help themselves in such an element as that in which
they are now struggling, unless they know that they may
count on the sympathy and the support of their countrymen
at home. Nothing is demanded of the English exchequer ;
the resources of the islands are practically boundless ; there
is a robust population conscious at the bottom of their nature
of their own inferiority, and docile and willing to work if
any one will direct them and set them to it. There will be

364 The English in the West Indies.

capital enough forthcoming, and energetic men enough and
intelligence enough, if we on our part will provide one thing,
the easiest of all if we really set our minds to it — an effective
and authoritative government. It is not safe even for our-
selves to leave a wound unattended to, though it be in the
least significant part of our bodies. The West Indies are a
small limb in the great body corporate of the British Em-
pire, but there is no great and no small in the life of nations.
The avoidable decay of the smallest member is an injury to
the whole. Let it be once known and felt that England re-
gards the West Indies as essentially one with herself, and
the English in the islands will resume their natural position,
and respect and order will come back, and those once thriv-
ing colonies will again advance with the rest on the high
road of civilisation and prosperity. Let it be known that
England considers only her immediate interests and will not
exert herself, and the other colonies will know what they have
to count upon, and the British Empire will dwindle down be-
fore long into a single insignificant island in the North Sea.

So end the reflections which I formed there from what I
saw and what I heard. I have written as an outside ob-
server unconnected with practical politics, with no motive
except a loyal pride in the greatness of my own country, and
a conviction, which I will not believe to be a dream, that
the destinies have still in store for her a yet grander future.
The units of us come and go ; the British Empire, the globe
itself and all that it inherits, will pass away as a vision.

ecrfferai rfp-ap orav t:ot 6\u>\r) *lAws ipi),
Ktx.1 Tlpia/nos Kal \abs iv/jfieAia) Hpuip.010.

The day will be when Ilium's towers may fall,
And large-limbed ' Priam, and his people all.

1 1 believe this to be the true meaning of ivp.pe\lrjs. It is usually
rendered, 'armed with a stout spear.'

Going Home. 365

But that day cannot be yet. Out of the now half-organic
fragments will yet be formed one living Imperial power, with
a new era of beneficence and usefulness to mankind. The
English people are spread far and wide. The sea is their
dominion, and their land is the finest portion of the globe.
It is theirs now, it will be theirs for ages to come if they re-
main themselves unchanged and keep the heart and temper
of their forefathers.

Naught shall make us rue,
If England to herself do rest but true.

The days pass, and our ship flies fast upon her way.

yXavicbv vitep oldjj.a Kvavoxpod re KVfiarwv
p6dia iroAia daXafftras.

How perfect the description ! How exactly in those eight
words Euripides draws the picture of the ocean ; the long
grey heaving swell, the darker steel-grey on the shadowed
slope of the surface waves, and the foam on their breaking
crests. Our thoughts flow back as we gaze to the times long
ago, when the earth belonged to other races as it now belongs
to us. The ocean is the same as it was. Their eyes saw it
as we see it :

Time writes no wrinkle on that azure brow.

Nor is the ocean alone the same. Human nature is still
vexed with the same problems, mocked with the same hopes,
wandering after the same illusions. The sea affected the
Greeks as it affects us, and was equally dear to them. It was
a Greek who said, ' The sea washes off all the ills of men ; '
the ' stainless one ' as iEschylus called it — the eternally pure.
On long voyages I take Greeks as my best companions. I
had Plato with me on my way home from the West Indie?.
He lived and wrote in an age like ours, when religion had

3G6 The English in the West Indies.

become a debatable subject on which everyone had his opin-
ion, and democracy was master of the civilised world, and the
Mediterranean states were running wild after liberty, pre-
paratory to the bursting of the bubble. Looking out on such
a world Plato left thoughts behind him the very language of
which is as full of application to our own larger world as if
it was written yesterday. It throws light on small things
as well as large, and interprets alike the condition of the isl-
ands which I had left, the condition of England, the condition
of all civilised countries in this modern epoch.

The chief characteristic of this age, as it was the chief
characteristic of Plato's, is the struggle for what we call the
'rights of man.' In other times the thing insisted on was
that men should do what was ' right ' as something due to a
higher authority. Now the demand is for what is called their
'rights' as something due to themselves, and among these
rights is a right to liberty ; liberty meaning the utmost pos-
sible freedom of every man consistent with the freedom of
others, and the abolition of every kind of authority of one
man over another. It is with this view that we have intro-
duced popular suffrage, that we give every one a vote, or aim
at giving it, as the highest political perfection.

We turn to Plato and we find : ' In a healthy community
there ought to be some authority over every single man and
woman. No person — not one — ought to act on his or her
judgment alone even in the smallest trifle. The soldier on a
campaign obeys his commander in little things as well as
great. The safety of the army requires it. But it is in peace
as it is in war, and there is no difference. Every person
should be trained from childhood to rule and to be ruled.
So only can the life of man, and the life of all creatures de-
pendent on him, be delivered from anarchy.'

It is worth while to observe how diametrically opposite to
our notions on this subject were the notions of a man of the

The Voice of the Peojtle. 367

finest intellect, with the fullest opportunities of observation,
and every one of whose estimates of things was confirmed by
the event. Such a discipline as he recommends never existed
in any community of men except perhaps among the religious
orders in the enthusiasm of their first institution, nor would
a society be long tolerable in which it was tried. Communi-
ties, however, have existed where people have thought more
of their obligations than of their ' rights,' more of the welfare
of their country, or of the success of a cause to which they
have devoted themselves, than of their personal pleasure or
interest — have preferred the wise leading of superior men to
their own wills or wishes. Nay, perhaps no community has
ever continued long, or has made a mark in the world of seri-
ous significance, where society has not been graduated in de-
grees, and there have not been deeper and stronger bands of
coherence than the fluctuating votes of majorities.

Times are changed we are told. We live in a new era,
when public opinion is king, and no other rule is possible ;
public opinion, as expressed in the press and on the platform,
and by the deliberately chosen representatives of the people.
Every question can be discussed and argued, all sides of it
can be heard, and the nation makes up its mind. The col-
lective judgment of all is wiser than the wisest single man —
securus judical orbis.

Give the public time, and I believe this to be true ; gener-
al opinion does in the long run form a right estimate of most
persons and of most things. As surely its immediate im-
pulses are almost invariably in directions which it afterwards
regrets and repudiates, and therefore constitutions which
have no surer basis than the popular judgment, as it shifts
from year to year or parliament to parliament, are built on
foundations looser than sand.

In concluding this book T have a few more words to say on
the subject, so ardently canvassed, of Imperial federation. It

368 The English in the West Indies.

seems so easy. You have only to form a new parliament in
which the colonies shall be represented according to numbers,
while each colony will retain its own for its own local pur-
poses. Local administration is demanded everywhere ; Eng-
land, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, can each have theirs, and the
vexed question of Home Kule can be disposed of in the re-
construction of the whole. A central parliament can then be
formed in which the parts can all be represented in propor-
tion to their number ; and a cabinet can be selected out of
this for the management of Imperial concerns. Nothing more
is necessary ; the thing will be done.

So in a hundred forms, but all on the same principle,
schemes of Imperial union have fallen under my eye. I
should myself judge from experience of what democratically
elected parliaments are growing into, that at the first session
of such a body the satellites would fly off into space, shat-
tered perhaps themselves in the process. "We have parlia-
ments enough already, and if no better device can be found
than by adding another to the number, the rash spirit of in-
novation has not yet gone far enough to fling our ancient con-
stitution into the crucible on so wild a chance.

Imperial federation, as it is called, is far away, if ever it is
to be realised at all. If it is to come it will come of itself,
brought about by circumstances and silent impulses working
continuously through many years unseen and unspoken of. It
is conceivable that Great Britain and her scattered offspring,
under the pressure of danger from without, or impelled by
some general purpose, might agree to place themselves for a
time under a single administrative head. It is conceivable
that out of a combination so formed, if it led to a successful
immediate result, some union of a closer kind might event-
ually emerge. It is not only conceivable, but it is entirely
certain, that attempts made when no such occasion has arisen,
by politicians ambitious of distinguishing themselves, will

Imperial Federation. SG9

fail, and in failing will make the object that is aimed at more
confessedly unattainable than it is now.

The present relation between the mother country and her
self-governed colonies is partly that of parent and children
who have grown to maturity and are taking care of them-
selves, partly of independent nations in friendly alliance,
partly as common subjects of the same sovereign, whose au-
thority is exercised in each by ministers of its own. Neither
of these analogies is exact, for the position alters from year to
year. So much the better. The relation which now exists
cannot be more than provisional ; let us not try to shape it
artificially, after a closet-made pattern. The threads of in-
terest and kindred must be left to spin themselves in their
own way. Meanwhile we can work together heartily and with
good will where we need each other's co-operation. Diffi-
culties will rise, perhaps, frorn time to time, but we can meet
them as they come, and we need not anticipate them. If we
are to be politically one, the organic fibres which connect us
are as yet too immature to bear a strain. All that we can do,
and all that at present we ought to try, is to act generously
whenever our assistance can be of use. The disposition of
English statesmen to draw closer to the colonies is of recent
growth. They cannot tell, and we cannot tell, how far it in-
dicates a real change of attitude or is merely a passing mood.
One thing, however, we ought to bear in mind, that the colo-
nies sympathise one with another, and that wrong or neglect
in any part of the Empire does not escape notice. The
larger colonies desire to know what the recent professions of
interest are worth, and they look keenly at our treatment of
their younger brothers who are still in our power. They are
practical, they attend to results, they guard jealously their
own privileges, but they are not so enamoured of constitu-
tional theory that they will patiently see their fellow-country-
men in less favoured situations swamped under the votes of
24

370 The English in the West Indies.

the coloured races. Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders,
will not be found enthusiastic for the extension of self-govern-
ment in the West Indies, when they know that it means the
extinction of their own white brothers who have settled there.
The placing English colonists at the mercy of coloured ma-
jorities they will resent as an injury to themselves ; they will
not look upon it as an extension of a generous principle, but
as an act of airy virtue which costs us nothing, and at the
bottom is but carelessness and indifference.

We imagine that we have seen the errors of our old co-
lonial policy,, and that we are in no danger of repeating them.
Yet in the W'est Indies we are treading over again the too
familiar road. The Anglo-Irish colonists in 1705 petitioned
for a union with Great Britain. A union would have involved
a share in British trade ; it was refused therefore, and we
gave them the penal laws instead. They set up manufact-
ures, built ships, and tried to raise a commerce of their own.
We laid them under disabilities which ruined their enter-
prises, and when they were resentful and became trouble-
some we turned round to the native Irish and made a virtue
of protecting them against our own people whom we had in-
jured. When the penal laws ceased to be useful to us, we
did not allow them to be executed. We played off Catholic
against Protestant while we were sacrificing both to our own
jealousy. Having made the government of the island impos-
sible for those whom we had planted there to govern it, we
emancipate the governed, and to conciliate them we allow
them to appropriate the possessions of their late masters.
And we have not conciliated the native Irish ; it was impos-
sible that we should ; we have simply armed them with the
only weapons which enable them to revenge their wrongs
uj)on us.

The history of the West Indies is a precise parallel. The
islands were necessary to our safety in our struggle with

JVew I r elands. 371

France and Spain. The colonists held them chiefly for us as
a garrison, and we in turn gave the colonists their slaves.
The white settlers ruled as in Ireland, the slaves obeyed, and
all went swimmingly. Times changed at home. Slavery
became unpopular ; it was abolished ; and, with a generosity
for which we never ceased to applaud ourselves, we voted an
indemnity of twenty millions to the owners. We imagined
that we had acquitted our consciences, but such debts are not
to be got rid of by payments of money. We had introduced
the slaves into the islands for our own advantage ; in setting
them free we revolutionised society. We remained still re-
sponsible for the social consequences, and we did not choose
to remember it. The planters were guilty only, like the
Irish landlords, of having ceased to be necessary to us. We
practised our virtues vicariously at their expense ; we had the
praise and honour, they had the suffering. They begged that
the emancipation might be gradual ; our impatience to clear
our reputation refused to wait. Their system of cultivation
being deranged, they petitioned for protection against the
competition of countries where slavery continued. The re-
quest was natural, but could not be listened to because to
grant it might raise infmitesircally the cost of the British
workman's breakfast. They struggled on, and even when a
new rival rose in the beetroot sugar they refused to be
beaten. The European powers, to save their beetroot, went
on to support it with a bounty. Against the purse of foreign
governments the sturdiest individuals cannot compete. De-
feated in a fight which had become unfair, the planters
looked, and looked in vain, to their own government for help.
Finding none, they turned to their kindred in the United
States ; there, at last, they found a hand held out to them.
The Americans were willing, though at a loss of two millions
and a half of revenue, to admit the poor West Indians to
their own market. But a commercial treaty was necessary ;

372 The English in the West Indies.

and a treaty could not be made without the sanction of the
English Government. The English Government, on some
fine-drawn crotchet, refused to colonies which were weak and
helpless what they would have granted without a word if de-
manded by Victoria or New South Wales, whose resentment
they feared. And when the West Indians, harassed, des-
perate, and half ruined, cried out against the enormous in-
justice, in the fear that their indignation might affect their
allegiance and lead them to seek admission into the American
Union, we extend the franchise among the blacks, on whose
hostility to such a measure we know that we can rely.

There is no occasion to suspect responsible English poli-
ticians of any sinister purpose in what they have done or not
done, or suspect them, indeed, of any purpose at all. They
act from day to day under the pressure of each exigency as
it rises, and they choose the course which is least directly in-
convenient. But the result is to have created in the Antilles
and Jamaica so many fresh Irelands, and I believe that Brit-
ish colonists the world over will feel together in these ques-
tions. They will not approve ; rather they will combine to
condemn the betrayal of their own fellow-countrymen. If
England desires her colonies to rally round her, she must de-
serve their affection and deserve their respect. She will find
neither one nor the other if she carelessly sacrifices her own
people in any part of the world to fear or convenience. The
magnetism which will bind them to her must be found in
herself or nowhere.

Perhaps nowhere ! Perhaps if we look to the real origin
of all that has gone wrong with us, of the policy which has
flung Ireland back into anarchy, which has weakened our in-
fluence abroad, which has ruined the oldest of our colonies,
and has made the continuance under our flag of the great
communities of our countrymen who are forming new nations
in the Pacific a question of doubt and uncertainty, we shall

Effects of Party. 373

find it in our own distractions, in the form of government
which is fast developing into a civil war under the semblance
of peace, where party is more than country, and a victory at
the hustings over a candidate of opposite principles more
glorious than a victory in the field over a foreign foe. Soci-
ety in republican Rome was so much interested in the faction
fights of Clodius and Milo that it could hear with apathy of
the destruction of Crassus and a Roman army. The senate
would have sold Csesar to the Celtic chiefs in Gaul, and the
modern English enthusiast would disintegrate the British
Islands to purchase the Irish vote. Till we can rise into
some nobler sphere of thought and conduct we may lay aside
the vision of a confederated empire.

Oh, England, model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What might'st thou do that honour would thee do
Were all thy children kind and natural !

1959